The Diamond of Two Destinies
by Daedalus370
Summary: Jazz is due to be married after his spar with Devan, but when the dastardly turtle proves himself hardy problems ensue. Along the path to defeat him for good, the Jackrabbit prince may realise that destiny might have much in store for him. T for violence.
1. Chapter 1: Of Young Love and Rings

**[Tentative]: Chapter 1**

Copyright notice: All of this is based on the Jazz Jackrabbit franchise. All of the named protagonists and antagonists from Jazz Jackrabbit 2—namely Jazz, Spaz, Lori, Eva, Devan, Spaz's unnamed girlfriend (of whom I will name), and the sub-bosses—are not made by me, but from the creators of the game. Special thanks to Cliff Bleszinski (CliffyB, as some call him) for the idea of Jazz Jackrabbit. Every other character is copyrighted by me.

A dirt road was soundly disturbed when a blurred scarlet object streamed down it at an incredibly speedy pace. Thick billows of dust wafted into the air almost instantaneously in the object's wake, then blew steadily into the west in accordance to the wind. It was a pity that the road that the thing had been following was facing in the west. Numerous travelers that had been walking down that same path were caught in the cloud left by the fast-travelling thing, and had choked and hacked in the impenetrable dust storm. It was even more piteous that rain had not come down on the land for three entire days, and the dust, if it had a mind of its own, was sure to be happy about to pelt in the rain's stead on the pedestrians that it had been underneath before.

At the head of the cloud was what can be most probably be considered a rabbit. He had the ears, the nose, and front teeth of the well-known creature, and if he were walking barefoot, his feet as well, but that was as far as the description matched. His fur, completely matted and unwashed for what seemed to be months, had taken on a gangly appearance that left entire clumps jutting out from his form in various areas, most notably his jutting cheeks and his flax-coloured underbelly, which was noticeable since he was, other than his blue loose-fitting boots and cuffs around his hands, quite unclothed, though he had no need to be ashamed as that was the custom of the land; all of the male sentient beings of the land, be they turtle, rabbit, or another, generally walked about in their natural state, without being hampered by clothing. His eyes, a moderate shade of green that was tinged slightly with blue, were somewhat crossed and focused inwards towards his snout, which stuck just slightly out from the rest of his face. His tongue, like the rest of him, was very much dissimilar from the rest of his kind in the fact that it was so long that it flopped out of his mouth unceremoniously like a flag in the wind. His arms stuck out in front of him, holding what seemed to be an expensive present wrapped in pink and laced with blue ribbon. Right now, instead of focusing on what he was doing, he looked back uselessly into the gritty cloud that he made in his tracks.

"S-sorry guys!" he shouted over his shoulder in a slightly squeaky voice. "I have to get to the castle with my present! It is _urg—ACK_!"

With his eyes focused elsewhere than the road ahead, the red rabbit quickly misplaced his footing, fell face-first into the ground, and skidded to a halt a few hundred feet away from where he had tripped. Luckily for him, he landed off of the dusty road and into a soft meadow of plush grass. Unluckily, his head was not in grass, but rather in a small pile of cow dung, which was odd for him since the land was mostly developed for carrots and not cows. Luckily again, he did not get any of the stuff in his mouth, as it was already stuffed from the opening to the back with a large wad of collected grass. Unluckily again, he did not know how to breathe through his nose, and nearly suffocated on the vegetation.

"Ptooie!" he spat as he coughed out a large volume of greenery onto the ground in front of him, not paying any attention to the dung he ejected it upon. "That stuff tastes worse than Bro's cooking, and that's saying a lot!" he voiced in distaste, spitting out even more grass wads and sticking out his tongue again.

"Excuse me, but are you okay?" intoned a young girl's voice from behind him, causing him to look behind him, leap to his feet, and turn around at the same time.

In front of him was a youth roughly nineteen years of age in rabbit years, with mellow goldenrod fur and a wheat-brown mouth. She was garbed in a very purple blouse that covered her shoulders down to halfway between the knee and hip, had her ears each tied by purple bands just a few inches from either end and were directed downwards so that they looked like ponytails, and had a deep blue parasol held in both her hands yet locked underneath her arms. Her azure eyes seemed equally deep, yet warm with friendliness that was sure to not be extinguished. Her smile was toothy and wild, teeth popping out of her mouth even though her lips were certainly closed. Dark-brown freckles dappled across her cheeks, giving her a rustic charm that left him instantly infatuated.

"Uh, um, yeah, I'm fine!" laughed the red rabbit squeakily, his eyes fixated on hers even as he spun around where he stood without any apparent reason. "I just didn't expect that rock to be there!" he added with a grin that made sure all of his teeth, including the molars, were visible.

The girl giggled slightly, patted her blouse down, and smiled at him kindly.

"So why were you in such a rush? I was afraid that I would be caught in the cloud as well had you not flown off of the road like that."

"Oh, I was on my way to my brother's wedding when I—oh no! The present! Jazz is going to kill me!" he screamed frantically, looking this way and that for the box he had held just a little while ago. It was a large present surrounded by a larger box, and though it had consisted of such bright colours, it was difficult to spot in the meadow, as everywhere one would look, there were thousands of blue and pink flowers staring back.

"Um-m-m, hmm . . ." mumbled the young lady as she set down her parasol onto the ground and started to search around the area.

The red rabbit smirked a smile, thankful to her for her helping him, and followed suit.

"Found it!" the girl squealed in joy minutes later, lifting the parcel from the ground and into the air for the red rabbit, who was scanning the area near the road, to see. In a blurred motion, he ran from his original position over to the girl's side. The present was a bit dented on a few sides, and more than a little dirty, but nothing else seemed to have happened to it, even though it took such a fall at the bursting speed. He smirked a smile and laughed whimsically in his usual shrill tone, causing the young lady to blush slightly in his presence. "Well, uhm, it's not too damaged, I hope."

"Nah, it's fine, really! This present can handle a fall like this, I'm sure! Thanks a lot!" he exclaimed happily. He exclaimed practically everything, unless he kept his voice in a whisper.

"You're welcome," she added with a second blush, handing over the present. "So you, uh, are Jazz Jackrabbit's brother, huh? That's neat . . . really neat. Now I know why you have the same speed as he does. A family thing, I would assume."

"Hee-yee-hee, yeah, Jazz is my brother, and I am his . . . mostly!"

"Mostly?" the girl spoke quizzically, tilting her head slightly. Her ponytail ears flopped slightly in the wind, making her appear more than a little cute, in the crimson rabbit's eyes.

"Eh, I don't know! We were sort of found together, as well as my sister! Oh crud, that reminds me! I have to get back! I am late for the early ceremonies! Lori will have my ears for this!" he shouted, winding up his legs slightly so that he could speedily run off in the direction of the road. However, he stopped doing so and looked back at the yellow maiden, who was still staring at him. He scratched the back of his head nervously and spoke in his usual manner again, "Say, what's your name? I never caught it! Mine's Spaz, by the way!"

"Amber . . ." the girl spoke, grinning a wildly toothy smile cutely at him. "Amber Rosetail. It was a pleasure to meet you," she added with a curtsy.

"Nice to meet you, too!" Spaz exclaimed with yet another high-pitched laugh. "I'll see if we could meet up again! Toodles!"

He burst off towards the road, generating an even larger amount of dust now that he was back on it, much to the distaste for the pedestrians that were walking down it who hacked and coughed anew. Amber giggled to herself, then walked over to where her parasol was and picked it up.

"Cute kid . . . a bit eccentric, but . . . cute anyways. I hope we meet again at the wedding," she smiled, placing the parasol, now fully outspread, over her head to shade herself from the beating sun. The castle was only a bit farther down the road, only a few more miles of walking. She heaved a soft sigh and continued heading towards it, somewhat more eager to join the festivities, now that she has met a new friend.

"Just where the dickens is he . . . ? He should be here by now. I mean, it's your wedding day!" exclaimed a lemon-yellow rabbit as she walked about on the dressing room floor. She was garbed in a long and elegant blue sleeveless dress that reached from the tips of her shoulders to just above the ankles, and she paced back and forth in the center of the room, her feet making soft padding sounds on the hardwood floor. She was incredibly nervous, as could be seen by her wringing her wrists and the slight bags under her bloodshot jet-black eyes. There was little doubt that she spent the night fretting of this day, and now that it had come, she felt unprepared. Her neatly combed hair, the front of which conglomerated into a swirl of follicles that hung just above her eyes and the rest of which was kept tied behind her with a purple ribbon and hung down to the base of her back, felt prickly to her, and she kept scratching the top of her head most fiercely to relieve herself of the tension.

"Lori, just stay calm, okay?" spoke the only other person in the room, a lime-green rabbit dressed in a full white tuxedo that was fit for a prince to be married in. A red bandana was wrapped around his head just because he liked having it so, giving his bangs a rough lift so that his green hair conglomerated into a thick mass. Golden cuffs, hidden slightly underneath his white sleeves, wrapped around his wrists as if they were tight-fitting bracers, and he was so used to their weight that he forgot all about them sometimes. He grinned at her widely as he folded his arms over his chest, quite forgetting how tight the suit was on his body. "Our brother is just getting the ring from the shop, and it would be expected that he would miss the opening ceremony, given his—how shall I put it?—nature. And besides, I should be more anxious than you!"

"Then why aren't you, Jazz?" Lori retorted with an agley frown, facing him fully so that he took the full blow of her bloodshot stare.

"Because you did all of it for me. . . . I mean, you did all of the wedding preparations, planning, dressed Eva and me up in these formal monkey-suits, and, heck, consoled us when we had cold feet!" laughed Jazz heartily. "You have done so much for me, Sis, and Eva as well! But you really need to take a rest and leave the worrying to me for once, okay? Just take a quick nap and—"

"But what if I don't wake up in time? What if I miss the entire wedding? Oh, no, that won't do, that won't do. I cannot miss my brother's wedding for anything!" She sat down onto a nearby chair, placed her hands on her forehead, and propped her aching head on her lap. She was close to sobbing, but the pressure of a hand on her shoulder restrained her from doing so.

"Hey, hey, don't worry even about that, Sis," Jazz consoled with a smile that only a sibling would understand the true warmth of, leaving his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "I can always wake you up before the wedding anyways. It _is_ two hours or so away, so that should give you plenty of time to rest yourself up."

"Well, if you insist on it . . . I suppose some rest would do me good. But make me a video tape just in case I don't—"

"Lori?"

Lori sighed and nodded slightly.

"Yeah, I know . . ." she agreed, rising off of the chair with ease and pulling her brother into a hug. "It's just that . . . this will be the end of the life that you knew for so long. I could hardly believe that you are twenty-five and now are to be married to somebody as wonderful as Princess Earlong. I'm just proud of you and—"

"Lori . . . you are crushing my spine," Jazz gasped painfully.

"O-oh, so sorry!" she stuttered as she let her brother go, who backed a pace away to stretch his back free from the pain. "I guess that was just my sisterly instinct kicking in. . . ."

"Powerful instinct, that," admitted Jazz with a silly smile on his face. "Just get the most rest you can, and I'll definitely wake you when the time comes for the wedding to start. And, ah, wish me luck that I don't mess this up, okay?"

"You can bet your whiskers that I'll do that," grinned Lori as she turned towards the door, but stopped as it opened quickly and slammed into the wall beside it with a loud "whump." Directly over the threshold was Spaz, standing in the middle of the door breathing heavily with the present still in his hands. Lori stamped her right foot and frowned at him, then, when he did not pay any attention to her and kept wheezing, walked over to his side and yanked his left ear so that he tilted with the pull.

"Yow! . . . What . . . was that . . . for?" Spaz uttered hastily in his squeaky yet still wheezing voice, tears forming in his eyes from the sudden tug.

"You know perfectly well what!" Lori spat as she let go of his ear. "This is your brother's wedding, and you are late?"

"It's not entirely my fault, you know!" Spaz riposted, now no longer out of breath. "I never knew the bird salesrabbit was going to be in town!"

"What kind of an excuse is that?"

"I had to eat, of course! It is tiring running that long without any food or water, I was hungry, and I had some money on my person! So I bought a few songbirds! Who cares?"

"You ate songbirds?" Lori gasped in disgust. "How dare you eat such lovely creatures in the middle of a carrot paradise! Why didn't you eat a carrot like anyone else would do?"

"Carrots are disgusting, that's why! Bluebirds, however, are sumptuous, tasty, mouthwatering, feathery . . . not to mention that they like me and I like them! Granted, there is a difference between the two, but—"

"Songbirds are for song! Game birds are for eating!"

"Whatever!"

Jazz stood in the background with his hand plastered against his forehead. _There they go yet again, _he thought with a scowl. If he had sweat glands, he would have had beads dripping down his forehead and neck. The decision to stop their argument or let it proceed was a difficult one, because either way he was sure to be yelled at.

"Guys, would you knock it off, please?" he bellowed in a very annoyed voice which made the siblings stop bickering for the moment. "This is an important day, and I just wish you both would stop arguing with each other on it!"

Unlike what he thought, neither shouted back at him. Both siblings looked at the other, Lori with a tired rolling of the eyes and Spaz with his, well, normal appearance, his tongue protruding from his mouth in an indecent manner and his entire body swaying without noticeable rhythm. He was in his own world at the moment, and Jazz knew that his younger brother stayed in that state for so long, it would take hours to wake him from his Spazzy trance without the aid of food.

Jazz smiled lightly as he saw his younger brother and rolled his blue eyes along with Lori before breaking the silence: "Well, Lori, this is about the best time to go and get some rest at the moment, and don't forget"—he winked his right eye and nodded synchronously—"that I will wake you just before it ever happens. Now go on, else I'll lock the door on you," he added playfully as she hesitated to go.

Lori laughed in a soft, melodious tone, albeit sleepily, and went out of the door in good spirits. She still was unsure that Jazz would handle all of the preparations that were left on his own, but, knowing her brother, she was sure that he was capable of finding a way to do them, with or without her help. The thought of sleep soothed her nerves, and she soon found her way into the bedroom that was so hospitably given her by Eva and her mother, Queen Earlong.

Jazz loved to hear his sister laugh, as he heard it so rarely whenever they were together. She always was shy in other people's company, and bickering and bossy when she argued with Spaz, but with him she was more at home for some odd reason, and vice versa. He pondered the reason why for a second or two, then shrugged his shoulders and quickly snapped his fingers, bringing his spaced-out brother back into reality.

"Eh? What? Oh, Jazz! What's up?" Spaz burst out squeakily as if nothing had happened within the past minute—nothing at all.

Jazz rolled his eyes again, but took Spaz's lack of attention lightly, as there was nothing to be gained from rattling an empty can like his brother. Instead of getting angry and shaking his brother around a bit, it was much easier to simply talk to him as if he were not absent-minded in the slightest.

"Nothing much, just a wedding to deal with," he uttered sarcastically with an added shrug, then pointed towards the present that Spaz still held in his hands. "That _is _the ring that you have there, right? Please say that it is and not a pile of bluebird bones. . . ."

Spaz seemed hurt by the comment for a split-second, but quickly changed back into his Spazzy composure as his tongue rolled out of his mouth again.

"Nope! It's the ring all right!" he shouted almost giddily, holding the present on the tips of his fingers with his left hand and, surprisingly, keeping it very still, even though his body swayed ever so slightly. Spaz was well-known in the castle to be unpredictable, and though he showed signs of lunacy commonly he had his bouts of sanity as well.

"That's good," Jazz sighed with relief, swiping his hand over his bandana and very large jackrabbit ears inadvertently. "Could you hand it here?"

"Sure thing!" Spaz chirruped as he tossed the box into the air towards his brother from the fingertips yet again, who caught it just before it hit the ground.

Jazz was close to scowling after the dive to get the box, but got up without a fuss and opened it up in one swift motion. Inside was a blue jewelry box that was about the width, length, and height of his hand with the thumb stretched outwards, and inside that, he discovered the ring itself. Contrary to his anatomical nature, sweat actually did bead on his brow now that he had seen the contents of the box, seeming that the band of heavily pounded gold and silver was attached to the largest diamond he had ever seen. The stone itself was much larger than his fist, and weighed down his hand as he held it.

"Jeez! I thought I asked for a diamond worth ten thousand carrots, not this behemoth!" he exclaimed with a shudder, not even daring to imagine how much it would cost him _and_ Princess Eva after they were quite married.

"Are you sure you didn't mean carats?" asked Spaz, still in his much more logical mood swing as he stepped into the center of the room, just a few paces away from Jazz himself.

"What's the difference . . . ?" Jazz asked as he started to turn nearly as pale as his tuxedo and his eyes narrowed into pinpoints.

"A carat is a sort of weight for diamonds, I think! I might have . . . not pronounced that right when I ordered the ring!" Spaz spoke nervously, laughing immediately afterwards in the same manner.

So I have a diamond worth ten thousand _carats_? How many carrots make up enough coins for a carat?"

"About one hundred coins per carat, I heard from the guy!" Spaz recited with his annoyingly shrill voice without the slightest hint of any emotion other than sheer giddiness.

Jazz held back his desire to strangle his brother by biting the inside of his cheek and clenching his fists so that it hurt to do so any further. He reeled on his feet and fell back on a chair next to the wall. His face underneath the green hair of his was as white as a sheet now, contrasting with the rest of his body vividly.

"And five carrots make a coin, so I owe five million carrots to the guy. . ." he groaned as he leaned back on the chair, staring up at the ceiling as if the debt, from out of the blue, were going to fall on him like a ton of bricks. "I can always return the diamond and have the ring have another, much cheaper diamond, but that would take too long. . . . And returning the ring for another after a wedding is even worse! Queen Earlong will have my head on a platter!"

"Not if Mother doesn't find out . . ." commented a voice from the door in a very soft and feminine voice, causing Spaz to leap so high upwards that he hit the ceiling and Jazz to jump out of the chair and, by sheer circumstance, onto his feet.

The voice, they knew, belonged to no one other than Eva Earlong herself, the princess of the realm and the successor to the throne of Carrotus, the world which all of rabbitdom, excepting a few more eccentric beings of the family, as well as turtledom had claimed as their home world. She was dressed from head to toe in the brilliantly white wedding regalia that Lori had dressed her up in, and was positively beaming in radiance even off the altar. Her ochre hair was tied up in a French braid, and hung over her shoulder down to the center of her back, clashing slightly, though in a very pretty way, with her cyan skin and fur. A spiked golden tiara, inset with only a single amethyst gem in the center spike, rested on the top of her head. Her eyes, just a shade lighter than Jazz's deep blue set, were locked with calm and collected composure normally, but, whenever she saw her fiancé, they glowed with a light of happiness and playfulness.

"How—what—when—how much did you hear?" Jazz sputtered nervously, his buck teeth clicking against the bottom set rather loudly. Spaz simply muttered distantly, as his head was trapped in the ceiling and he could barely say—or even hear—a thing.

Eva shrugged her shoulders as best as she was able, given the limitations of the wedding dress she was garbed in, and smiled lightly at Jazz, admiring the suit that he was wearing for a brief instant before answering the question.

"Only that you were thinking of returning the ring for another one and the fact that Mother would probably mount your head," she grinned in a laughable manner. "So the ring that they provided you had too small a stone for your liking, huh?"

"Well, uh . . . why don't you see for yourself?" Jazz answered, twice as nervous as before and offering the jewelry box, now closed, for her observance.

Eva laughed through her nose at the gesture, and stepped forward to take the jewelry box from his outstretched hand.

"Oh, come on, how small can the gem be? I'd love it anyways, since you gave it to me, but . . . why is it so heavy?" she questioned, lifting the cover of the jewelry box and looking down in stunned silence at the contents.

"Yeah . . . that's why," admitted Jazz as he walked over to her side, suddenly feeling a lot better now that the worst was over with. "It seems the jeweler had a bit of fun with the order Spaz and I sent in. . . ."

Spaz uttered a series of squeals and soft screeches as he tried to get his head out of the hole in the ceiling that he had just created. He pushed against the sides of the ceiling with his hands, and sometimes his feet as well, but for some reason his head was stuck like glue. Jazz and Eva took this as an affirmative answer, and continued discussing the ring.

"It's so huge . . . I don't even know if that could fit on my finger. . . ."

"Only one way to find out with that . . ." Jazz answered mildly as he took the sides of the brilliant-cut diamond and extracted it, ring and all, from the ring-box. Eva looked at him as if he were joking, then realized his sincerity and stuck her ring finger into the loop of the dwarfed loop of gold and silver.

"Well . . . it looks pretty, sure, but . . . don't you think it is a little too big?" Eva uttered as Jazz let go of the diamond's surface and allowed it to drop. Her hand was outstretched and immobile, and both her wrist and hand sagged underneath the massive weight of the ring.

"That's the understatement of the day," he laughed, unable to keep in the hilarity that was building up in his chest ever since he saw the dreadfully beautiful ten-thousand-carat gem atop the tiny ring. "I'm sure that the choice is simple to make, huh?"

"Yeah, quite simple," agreed Eva, smirking a smile as she removed the ring from her finger and set it back into the jewelry case. "However, the wedding must go on. We'll use it then and return it immediately afterwards. Mother needn't know a thing about it _after_ the wedding."

"That's a relief," grinned Jazz in response before getting kicked in the face by one of Spaz's flailing limbs, the owner of which spun around like a propeller with his head as the center of rotation.

He scowled up at the ceiling, covered his eye with one hand, and grabbed one of Spaz's flying legs with the other, tugging it downwards forcefully. Spaz was very much surprised by this, and fell down squealing as his head popped out of the hole, followed by a large amount of dust and plaster. Eva stifled a laugh at the scene and stepped up to assist Spaz in getting up on his feet.

"Ah, thanks for that!" gulped Spaz with both hapless abandon and a tinge of mixed fear, his tongue sticking out in his usual way. "There were spiders the size of my hand up there! And they were the ugliest things you ever would see! What happened to you, Bro?" he questioned, pointing towards his brother's injured eye.

"The usual incident," growled Jazz with an added frown before waving the matter off. "Eva, you should go. It is bad luck to see me before the wedding."

"I would think that should be my line," Eva laughed, tossing a wide grin at him. "See you in two hours, hubby."

"Sure, sure, honey pot," chuckled Jazz, tossing the other half of the sweetheart nicknames they called each other oftentimes. Spaz was clueless as to what was happening, as his eyes, vacant of much intelligence though they may be, darted from one to the other as if searching for an explanation.

Eva giggled and left the room as quickly as she entered, leaving the ring box on the side table next to the door before crossing the threshold. Jazz stood absolutely still, dazed by love, whereas Spaz swayed irregularly again, thinking of honey, bluebirds, roast chicken, and whatever else he was craving at the moment. Jazz was the first to snap to his senses, and flicked his fingers together to bring his brother back similarly.

"Spaz, you're next. If you could bring that to the minister"—he pointed at the jewelry case on the table—"that would be lovely. I will have a lot of things to do in the meantime, and if you do that, well, that's one less thing off my chest."

"All right, Bro!" grinned Spaz, revealing all of his teeth before squealing happily and turning around towards the door to exit, ring box in hand.

Jazz was left in the room with only his thoughts for company, and that was more than welcome to the jackrabbit. Lori hounded him like a dog all day, and, as sweet as she was, he desired more than a little to be alone from even her. He was a free spirit for the longest time, an adventurer that had spanned the universe with only his multifariously purposeful gun in hand, searching hither and yon for the meaning of his existence. He hardly visited his brother and sister when they stayed back here on Carrotus, and left for months at a time sweeping the planets free from the evils of the universe, especially from that evil Devan Shell.

He ground his teeth as he recalled that name. He hated the turtle for all of the scientific misdeeds that he had done, the experiments that he had performed on creatures of all types, especially both turtle- and rabbit-kind, for his sick, malevolent purposes. Devan always harboured a hatred for rabbits just as he used to have a hatred for turtles, and they became instant rivals when they first met.

Jazz pounded the arm of one of the solid chairs of the room, silently wishing that it had been the turtle's face, but reminded himself that if Devan had never existed, he would have never met Eva. He recalled the fateful day when Devan had held the princess at gunpoint, claiming that he never had experimented on a princess before and thought of it, as well as blowing up all of Carrotus, as a fitting way to get back at rabbit-kind for what it "did" to him. He recalled the anger he felt against him then, for abducting a girl in the prime of her life. He recalled the instance connection that Eva and he had together as he continued fighting one planet after another to rescue her from the clutches of that madman.

He had achieved his goal in the end, simultaneously stopping Devan from his own, and eventually made his way up the social ranks to princedom when he started dating Princess Eva. Being a future member of the royal family and associating himself with them was hardly his idea of enjoyment, but Eva changed everything. He no longer was purely a killing machine and legendary war hero, but a lover and soon-to-be king of all of Carrotus, and that scared him slightly.

_What if the world needs me yet again to save it?_ he thought more often than not, looking down at his tuxedo and heaving a sigh. Every time he asked himself that question, he answered himself immediately afterwards that Lori and Spaz both have the same amount of ability that he had, whether it be agility, stamina, and, best of all, gunmanship. They were more than enough to save the world numerous times over, so why did he question this? He instantly felt the knot in his stomach unravel, and he felt more at peace with his decision than ever before: he was going to marry Eva today.

A smile crept up on his face. Married life was no easy task and neither was kinghood, but with Eva at his side, he was sure to succeed. Slowly, calmly, he stepped out of the room, ready to complete the last remaining plans so that he could savour the moment all the longer. He was getting married.


	2. Chapter 2: The Wedding

**The Diamond of Two Destinies: Chapter 2**

Everything was coming along smoothly for Jazz as he went to work on the miscellaneous errands that he had ensured to Lori that he would do. They were all very minor, and were constantly nitpicked at by numerous valets, maids, and lesser wedding planners that he practically wanted to scream, but he chose to be as patient as possible and decided on the minute decisions with control, most of the cause being that this was a very important day for him and he wanted to make the best of it. He wondered how Lori got any sleep at all last night after the harping on of the helpers, or if she even did sleep to begin with. He chose to stay away from the affairs within and around the bridal dressing room for obvious reasons, and instead sent one of the planners to go in his stead.

All of the minutiae that he was to check on were completed within an hour-and-twenty-minutes, and, after tossing a squirt of water into his face from a washbasin, he decided to check in on Lori and wake her. It was a ten-minute walk to that wing of the castle, and a thirty-second sprint with his super-critter speed, but he decided to perform the former, just so he could clear his head fully from the hodge-podge of insignificant errands and to concentrate more on the lady he was going to marry.

Was he really going to do this? Was he really ready? Thoughts poured through his head like water on rock as he walked through the grandiose hallways of the castle, and he countered them with a resounding "yes" in no hesitation at all. The travel, in his eyes, took very little time at all, and he came face-to-face with the oaken door of his sister's room. He smirked a smile at the "Do Not Disturb" sign hanging on the doorknob, noticing the hastily written slip of paper taped underneath its red letters that read "unless the wedding is starting soon." He knocked on the door three times with a solid knock, and before he was able to issue a fourth the door opened creakingly, revealing the form of his sister.

She was no longer in the dress that she had picked out for the wedding, but rather was in her usual attire: a purple tight-fitting sleeveless shirt that spanned over her shoulders and the upper torso yet did not go down to her stomach area, and a pair of matching shorts that went down to just beyond the center of her upper leg, not quite reaching the knee. Her hair was loosened from its ponytail status, taking the form of a yellow waterfall that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. The red spider-web within her eyes were still pronounced, though were much less so than before, and the eyes themselves had regained a small amount of their normal lustre.

"Saw your note," Jazz started, causing Lori to blush slightly through her yellow fur in embarrassment. "You really are this eager to see me married off, huh?"

"I suppose it's a sisterly thing," she countered with a grin. "And besides, I want to boss you around one final time before your 'honey pot' does," she added with a giggle.

"Ah, you heard that . . . ?" Jazz spoke, embarrassment revealing itself in him as he scratched the back of his neck and laughed nervously.

"Yep, among other things that would turn you beet red," Lori continued jokingly. "But enough about that. . . . How long till the opening ceremony?"

"Just less than thirty minutes, maybe."

"That's good. Always best to be early than even a little late. Thanks for that, Jazz."

"No problem, Sis," he grinned. "I'll let you get dressed up again. I'll see you there, then?"

"Pfft, but of course, and if _you_ aren't, I'll be sure to be the first to pull your whiskers," Lori laughed.

"Don't worry about that, I'll be there too," Jazz laughed heartily before turning around, heading for the chapel just outside the castle grounds at which the wedding was supposed to take place.

The smile he wore when he was with Lori never went away as he traced his way through the castle corridors, out of the main gate between the castle and its gardens, and towards the chapel. He looked this way and that, noticing the sights, sounds, and smells of nature all about him. Birds chirruped in the apple trees that populated both the gardens of the castle and the quiet yet large town below it, and the shallow stream just a few feet away from the dirt path Jazz walked down gurgled like an infant and splashed softly over the pebbly ground it coasted down. The smells of ripening apples and distant pine from beyond the castle walls loomed through the air, and the scents from the local feverfew, roses and tulips made the smell even more welcoming to him. The day seemed to be perfect for a wedding, as even the local sun beat amiably down on Carrotus with warm, gentle beams that summer afternoon.

The walk took a little less than ten minutes till he came to the crossroads in front of the castle. All of the paths that it diverged from, including the one Jazz had traveled down, were all made from compacted dirt and soft gravel, and were so trodden by wayfarers that they were solid and without any weeds excepting the occasional dandelion on the edge, the flower of which was hastily devoured by pedestrians. The dust from the roads had settled down now that the streets were relatively empty, as most of the town was already at the chapel waiting for the ceremony to start and finish and, the more likely of the chances, for the wedding feast that had been promised them.

The castle sat on top of the largest hill in the region, overlooking Rabbit Town to the south, the pine forests that were omnipresent in the north and east, and the Vegetable Labyrinth to the west, where vegetables grew to monstrous sizes and in such numbers that they were able to blot out the sun in select areas. In between the castle and all three were various fields that spread like spanning tendrils across the landscape, neatly manicured into endless rows of plants, mainly carrots and tomatoes, and sparse few farmhouses and barns resting randomly on the plots of land. Minor paths, some of which were apparently covered by weeds and grass through lack of use, interweaved through the fields and melded into the main road between the castle and town similarly.

Jazz cast a sweeping gaze at the world around him and heaved a happy sigh. It was a beautiful sight for him, and he recalled when he last took a glance around him from this very spot when he was a young orphan kit. It all was so different now, and friendlier than those darker days when the people used to spit at his presence in the same manner as all of the other urchins and serfdom had been applied to the carrot farmers. _But_, he thought, _all of that is in the past now. People have changed just as I have, and will change for the better long after I am dead and gone_. His smile grew wider, and he turned to the left where the large pine forests of Carrotus lay, descending down the hill in a short run just for the sake of doing it.

The chapel was not far inside the forest, and Jazz saw it through the trees even from the hilltop. It should hardly have been considered a chapel instead of a cathedral, given the size of the monstrous building was close to the size of the keep of the fortress, though slightly less ornate. Whitewashed stone walls similar to those of the castle composed of the exterior and interior of the building, and bell towers attached to all four corners of the building stuck out into the air like fingers reaching into the air. A parapeted balcony stood over the carpeted main entrance of the chapel, and overlooking that was a stained glass window set in the image of the patriarch king of Carrotus, the original Matthew Earlong of whom most of the later kings, including the late king, Eva's father, shared their names with.

Jazz could not help but feel a sense of awe as he saw the large structure once again, and his mouth hung open as he slowed his pace towards it. Old memories from previous weddings flooded back to him, and now it was his turn to have a wedding. He felt amazed and excited by the feeling. Never before had he even thought of marrying, and now here he was, at the pinnacle of his life so far. He choked back his emotions and continued towards the chapel, feeling like the luckiest rabbit in the world, or any world for that matter.

Lori came through the front entrance of the chapel in the nick of time, just before the ceremony was about to take place. She received odd stares from numerous rabbits that seemed to shout "Why haven't you arrived sooner?" towards her, but she ignored them on the most part. She could not help but smile happily on this day that she thought would never come. She evened out the dress that she picked out for herself with a casual sweep of her fingers and sat down on one of the furthest pews on the right-hand side of the building, taking in a glance of everything around her.

The room she was in was enormous, so much so that the domed ceiling above had to be supported with large wooden beams that hovered over the heads of everyone like a gigantic latticework. Stained glass windows coloured the room with shades of every hue, making everything within it seem so illusionary that it was beautiful to see. Large pews with red hempen cushions on the seat and the back and spanning roughly a third of the room sat on either side of the room, giving more than enough space on either side of them in case a mass exodus was necessary. On the far side of the chapel sat a podium standing on a dais, laden with fresh-cut roses and lilies that filled the entire room with their perfume, and a wooden harpsichord that seemed as old as the building itself, used more often for weddings than anything else. Jazz stood erect, with his eyes focused towards the entrance, on the left-hand side of the minister, a rather chubby character with small ears, brown fur, and a bushy mustache that muffled everything that he said excepting his loudest of voices. Rabbits of every age crowded the back half of the pews, leaving the front for the family members of the marrying couple.

Lori looked down at her lap afterwards, saddened that both of the threesome's parents were not here to witness this day. Jazz, Spaz, and herself were the only family they had for each other, and that made things difficult when they were young. She looked up to Jazz with the respect and authority of a father as well as a brother, and now that he was going to be married, she could not help but be her happiest and saddest at the same time. She knew that nothing would be the same now that he would be the husband of a queen, but she had to let that go and move on, no matter how difficult that would be.

Her ears caught the sound of the harpsichord playing the first few notes of the Carrotus wedding march and craned her head to look behind her through the throng of people that did likewise. Eva stepped into the room with angelic poise, garbed in her wedding dress and veil, accompanied by her mother who wrapped her right arm around Eva's left.

The queen was a lot taller than the average rabbit, and had a much thicker set as well, looking more like a dark-blue female sumo wrestler than anything else. Thin and short strands of white hair that spiked out in practically every direction covered the top of her head, and steel-grey eyes as unreadable as the storm darted from one side to the other in a mistrustful manner. She was clad in her usual red dress that surprisingly was larger than herself, which, Lori suspected, was made that way by some cunning designer so that she would blame the dress for the awkward stares she received. Her face was the perfect symbol of gruffness, as all of her features had wrinkles that, although disguised by her choice of powdering in a very minor way, still held contempt and ever-present fearsomeness. She disliked anyone and everyone excepting her beloved daughter now that her husband died from an illness, and took particular distaste towards Jazz himself when he started dating Eva, but now she was indifferent to that idea, finding him a suitable match but little else for her daughter.

Lori stifled a laugh at the queen's features and diverted her gaze towards Eva in an effort to put the laughable sight out of her mind. Eva was the exact opposite of her mother, and was what a lady of her status was usually assumed to be: beauteous, kind, gentle, and smart. She irradiated a mien of quiet excitement and joy that permeated all of the room as it saw her. Jazz, Lori noticed, was just as excited and joyous as Eva was, and blushed a soft tone of red as he saw her coming down the aisle towards him.

Lori wondered to herself what it was like to be in their shoes, to love someone so powerfully that she would give herself to him and he her, and frowned slightly in recognition that she did not understand it fully. _Only time will tell whether that will happen or not,_ she told herself, the frown inverting into a small smile as she returned her gaze back to the dais.

Eva and her mother had reached where Jazz and the minister stood, and Queen Earlong let go of her daughter's arm to sit on the front pew to the left. The seat made a large amount of creaks and groans as she descended upon it, and numerous stifled chuckles emanated from behind her that were not stifled enough, as they were able to be heard even over the harpsichord in the distance. A swift glare from the queen silenced them all effectively, and all of the room focused back on the young couple and the minister. The harpsichord immediately stopped playing.

"Durfly bewubbed," intoned the minister, his words distorting through the mop of whiskers on his lip, "vee are gavvered hee todah to vitness zee union ov t-hoo younk peopawl in wooly matwimoney. . . ."

Jazz and Eva looked at each other and chuckled at the risible opening blessing, while the rest of the room only laughed in short, quiet bursts, probably because they had attended a wedding ceremony with him previously. Everyone bore through the muffled speech, trying to keep a straight face. The priest continued babbling in his harangue of misspoken words until even the bride and groom seemed about to explode with held-in giggling. Lori herself was unable to help herself from giggling a bit some time or another, but she remained to listen intently to the words regardless. Finally the ceremony was drawing to a close, and the fateful I-dos were coming up. Jazz and Eva both tensed when they recognized it coming and smiled abashedly at each other, awaiting the words with great expectation.

"Buhwink the wings fahwad."

Everyone tilted their heads towards the audience's right, over the dais and at the side entrance where the bearer of the ring boxes was supposed to enter, and found that he was nowhere to be seen. Five long seconds passed by, and he was still not there. The minister's cheeks turned red, half from embarrassment and the other half through slight anger towards the fellow, and he repeated the line once again in a much louder voice.

"Bring the rings forward!"

Everyone jumped in their seats, excepting the couple, who apparently were standing while they were scared out of their wits. Loud shuffling was heard in the direction of the door, followed by a solid "whump" as if somebody had fallen more than a few feet onto the ground. More shuffling ensued before the bearer popped out of the doorway and walked quickly across the floor and onto the raised platform. It was none other than Spaz.

Lori stifled a titter as she saw Jazz's and Eva's reaction as they saw him, and returned her gaze towards her younger brother with a grin. Spaz was dressed in his usual attire, with the exception of the black bow tie that was strapped around his neck, and held the ring boxes upright from their bases with apparent ease, even though one was the size of a honeydew melon and the other the size of a teacup. He seemed to be in one of his logical mood swings, as everything he did was quiet and gradual. He approached the podium, set the two jewelry cases on it, winked at the marrying couple, and sat down next to Lori without an incident of insanity. The room remained silent, stupefied that Spaz Jackrabbit, voted the most random rabbit in the world, was capable of this type of perfection, much less on a very important occasion.

"Do-hoo vou, Yivva Earyonk, take Razz Rackribbit to ve vour wawful webbed hoosbund?" the priest intoned after Spaz had taken his seat, tilting his head towards Eva.

"I . . . I do," she answered, tilting her head away from the audience and blushing very red.

The minister nodded once, then looked over to Jazz in the same manner.

"Do-hoo vou, Razz Rackroobit, take Yeeva Yearlonk to be vour wawful webbed wife?"

Jazz's cheeks blushed rouge before he voiced, "I do."

The minister nodded again, reached for the smaller ring box with his left hand, opened it with his right, and took out the wedding band that it held with his thumb and index finger, handing it immediately afterwards to Eva.

"Repe-heat aftah me: vith thish wing I do-hoo wed Rash Rackrubick, to h-h-honour and wuv till deaf do-hoo you part."

Eva repeated the words, albeit clearly, with much excitement, and placed the band on Jazz's ring finger, her own fingers lingering a second longer as she smiled lovingly at Jazz before pulling them away back to her side. Jazz looked down at the wedding band with a smile and lifted his eyes to meet Eva's, the smile building to the same level of emotional magnitude as her own. The minister smiled from underneath the follicular mass and cleared his throat, causing the two young folk to look at him.

"Repe-heat aftah me: vith thish wing I do-hoo wed . . ." the priest spoke in a more crackly tone, reaching down towards the ring before halting both his sentence and his action and instead perking his long floppy ears slightly. "Vat in the vorld is zat noise . . . ?" he uttered semi-audibly.

The audience heard it too: a faint buzzing that rang through the air louder and louder like an incoming insect. Everyone looked around them for the source of the noise, but were unsure of the source until the unexpected happened. A pale yellow lizard with darker yellow rings surrounding his entire body zoomed through the front entrance, riding some sort of propeller that was attached to his back through the convenience of a deep blue backpack. He had deeply set eyes that were unheard of in any lizard the audience—even the Jackrabbit siblings—had ever seen, a very pronounced beak that was similar to a turtle's, limbs that were very long and thin, and razor-sharp teeth and fierce claws that denoted that he was definitely a carnivore.

The creature hovered down the center of the aisle, much to the audience's distress as they migrated further towards the edges of their pews to put more distance between them and the yellow creature, and halted a distance away from the couple, who stood as solid as stone in its presence. Lori and Spaz jumped to their feet instinctively and reached to their side for their guns, but quickly recalled that they left them back in the castle. Spaz returned to his seat, his eyes never leaving the lizard, whereas Lori crouched very low and started to pull at her dress, taking it off so she would only be garbed in her normal purple attire that she wore underneath it. The creature did not see either of their reactions, focusing its inset eyes on Jazz, Eva, and the strangely large box on the podium before smiling.

"Hello. Sorry to interrupt," the lizard spoke in an unctuous tone, taking a hasty bow before the helicopter budged too much from the space he had hovered in. "I just _had_ to say my congratulations towards the happy couple."

The two young rabbits remained silent, blinking in confusion as they looked at each other.

"Please understand that I represent a higher power in saying this," the lizard continued in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "I was sent here to give you your present as well. I hope you don't mind if I give you them now."

"Actually, we do mind," Eva voiced bravely before Jazz was about to answer in the same manner, removing the wedding veil from her head and stepping a pace forward so that the reptile focused on her. "You can give them after the wedding is finished, but not now."

"I am sorry, but I cannot stay that long. I must give them now or not at all, and the master would not be pleased if I return back with his present," the lizard added with a hasty bow again.

The two rabbits left on the dais—seeming that the minister ran off of it and into a corner between two walls in an act of cowardice—looked at each other and shrugged.

"It's up to you, hon," Jazz spoke softly, holding back the urge to strangle the reptile as he did not desire to provoke this "master" with a hasty decision like throttling his underling's neck.

Eva nodded slightly and turned to the lizard.

"If this is really necessary, you can give them now. Just leave as soon as you do so. I don't take kindly to uninvited guests very much," she answered curtly and frowningly.

"Ah, very good, very good," the lizard smiled, fiddling around with the zipper on his backpack and extracting a cubic box wrapped in green wrapping paper and tied with a pair of red ribbons. "Here you go," he tacked on as he tossed the present into Jazz's hands.

"Thank you," Eva pronounced formally, giving a smile that was more forced than friendly.

The reptile remained where he was, not zipping the backpack up, not manipulating his helicopter, not even blinking, but he was still smiling. Eva licked her lips, feeling the awkward moment gnaw on her nerves, and frowned once again.

"You can go now."

Jazz thought he heard some sort of fizzing, but the whirring of the helicopter was loud enough that he thought his ears were lying to him. The creature's head tilted ever so slightly, his eyes started to glint with some sort of light, and the strangely turtle-like smile grew into a stranger, slightly twisted grin.

"Devan sends his regards," he spoke, hovering just a bit further away as he did so.

Jazz's eyes narrowed as he switched the present into his right hand and threw it over his shoulder towards the back of the chapel, but it was too late to hurl it far enough. The box exploded into a ball of light, tossing him and Eva into the air and causing them to slam them into the center aisle with a harsh thud. The crowds of people sitting in the pews screamed in terror and rushed to the side aisles, fleeing the scene and leaving the princess and hero in their wounded state.

"Jazz! Eva!" Lori screamed at the top of her lungs as she and her brother rushed to their sides.

"EVA!" bellowed Queen Earlong like a trumpeting elephant while her face contorted so much that it looked similar to that of a maddened gorilla.

She jumped up from the pew that she was sitting on, grabbed the top and bottom of the seat from the middle, and lifted it above her head as if it were nothing at all. The lizard saw this happen and gulped, taking out another box out from his backpack and tossing it directly at her. Queen Earlong dropped the pew in front of her as if it were a shield and hid the most of herself behind it before the bomb, upon contact with the makeshift defence, exploded. The queen was tossed into the air as effectively as Jazz and Eva were when the pew was blown to pieces in the middle, and she was flung into the stained glass window directly behind her, instantly shattering it.

Both of the siblings dragged the two wounded rabbits into the cover of the pews that they were nearby, making sure that they were out of the sight of that wretched reptile. Lori peeked her head over the pew she hid behind and noticed that the lizard was not focused on either of the two rabbits, but instead on the ring box that had been caught in the explosion and was tossed directly underneath him. He was descending in order to grab it very slowly, leaving her enough time to make an attempt towards him.

She looked down at Eva with analyzing eyes, noticing that she was still breathing and was relatively unharmed, but was definitely unconscious by the fall. Looking over her shoulder, she recognized that Jazz had been extremely lucky as well. He had taken a tremendous blow from the explosion, but was unscathed excepting a few burns of various degrees. He showed no signs of broken bones, and she saw that he was breathing in short, rapid gasps and was still conscious, having hit the ground mainly on his shoulder instead of his head.

Spaz gave her a glance of apparent relief, and she returned it, along with a set of hand signals that all three of the Jackrabbits understood thoroughly. Both of the Jackrabbit brothers nodded slowly, and she assumed that she heard a "Be careful" from Jazz when she turned away. She got up in a swift motion, leapt over Eva in a bound, and ran out of the pew towards the lizard just as he grabbed the ring box and placed it in his backpack.

"You will pay for what you've done!" she snarled, leaping into the air five paces away from the lizard and wheeling diagonally with such speed and rotation that she was almost a blur.

The lizard turned around, gulped again, and was about to toss another bomb before Lori landed three powerful kicks into his chest, blasting him with such force that he dropped the ring box as his body skidded to a halt along the floor. The helicopter blade had folded in on itself in midflight before he ever touched the ground, as if it avoided the risk that it would be damaged from the fall or him, for that matter, with a mind of its own. Numerous bombs wrapped in similar green boxes had fallen out of the open backpack and onto the floor, lighting up the chapel with an equal amount of detonations.

The reptile groaned and grunted from the pain of the kicks, yet quickly rose to his feet when he heard the bombs go off. The helicopter burst out of the fold in his backpack as quickly as it disassembled itself and started to activate, but Lori arrived faster than he had anticipated, delivering an uppercut that sent him flying upwards into the air.

The lizard, his limbs and head suspended from his body in a flaccid manner, was held by the autogiro way above the room. He looked like he was about to faint from the blows that he had sustained, but instead held on to consciousness as his senses returned. He wiped his jaw line, finding a trickle of blood on his lips, and spat out a sharp, triangular tooth onto the ground below. After a bout of coughing, he gave a glare down at the yellow rabbit standing opposite of the torn floor where the bombs had fallen, who stared up at him in the same manner with unchecked anger.

"Why did you do this?" Lori spat, clenching her fists into tightly-knit balls. "All of this for a ring?"

"You have no idea," the reptile frowned, reaching into the backpack with both of his long, thin arms. Lori's ears pinned back as she stepped back a pace in preparation for a number of bomb, but she was surprised by what she actually saw. The lizard held two objects in his hands: the one in his right hand most certainly being a bomb of the same type as he threw before and the one in his opposite being the melon-sized jewelry box. "This box of yours will change the fate of this and every world in more ways than you know. It will save my family"—he coughed again, more violently than before—"from becoming like me, a victim of you rabbits!" He spoke the word "rabbits" with such vehemence that his eyes appeared to burn with an inner flame when saying it.

"Victim?" spoke Jazz angrily, rising from behind the pew with Spaz supporting him underneath his arm. "The rabbits are the victims of you terrorists, not the other way around! Devan has twisted you into his puppet, just like the others I fought a year ago!"

"A puppet indeed," scoffed the lizard before returning the jewelry case to his backpack. "Pity that you don't understand, but I have much more important business to deal with than you."

The lizard maneuvered forward towards the front of the church, lobbing the bomb towards the glass face of Matthew Earlong. All of the rabbits dove for cover behind the pews again, when the bomb contacted with the patriarchal stained-glass window and exploded so violently that the entire window came crashing down in a shower of glass shards and metalwork. The lizard flew through the newly formed opening without even the slightest hesitation, not moving a muscle other than to change his course even as the fragments of glass fell down on him and marked his reptilian skin with cuts.

Lori felt her rage bubbling up as she peered over the pew towards the gaping hole in the chapel; she wanted to chase the lizard, make him pay for hurting her brother and ruining his wedding day, but she knew that she had to stay. She noticed that Spaz, looking over the back of the pew like herself, had been following the lizard's movement with his eyes, while Jazz was no longer inside the seat but rather at the other side of the chapel, leaning inwards as if he were looking at something.

Or someone: Eva.

Lori's heart beat fast as she recalled the unconscious princess that she had left hidden in the row of seats, and she ran across the floor to see if she was all right. Eva was lying with her head facing towards the back of the chapel and her body lying downwards, and was virtually unscathed except for a few glass cuts on her unsheltered cheek and wrists. The two siblings both heaved a sigh of relief as they relaxed their limbs. Lori was about to reprimand Jazz for moving with such serious burns, but after a closer look, she realized that his burns were not quite as severe as she thought they were. She breathed a secondary sigh.

This critical moment was broken when Spaz rotated around on the pew, turned towards his siblings, and yelled at the top of his shrill, shrill voice: "GUYS! I WANT ONE OF THOSE!" Lori merely groaned while Jazz smacked his forehead soundly with his palm; they both knew for certain that his sober moment was over and also what he wanted without needing to turn around: an autogiro.

"JAZZ JACKRABBIT!" roared a thunderous voice from the front entrance of the chapel, making the siblings leap into the air in surprise.

Spaz, given his amazing jump capability, leapt higher than both, launching himself many feet above the ground and coming down with a very audible "whump" as he belly-flopped the floor. Everybody turned around to spot the furious Queen Earlong, her nose flaring in rage, the face twisted into an prune-like mass, the eyes appearing infernal, and the ears giving the occasional twitch. Jazz gulped as he watched her approach him, her feet crunching over the remnants of the window without the least amount of pain.

"JAZZ JACKRABBIT!" she roared again, grabbing him by his shoulders as she picked him up and shook him about, leaving all of the Jackrabbits very unnerved and Jazz more than a little dizzy. "WHERE'S MY DAUGHTER?"

"Down there," he rasped while tilting his head down where Eva rested. "Don't worry though, she's okay. . . ."

The queen gave him a fiery glare, craned her thick and sinewy neck towards where he was focusing on, held him suspended in the air with her right arm, and stepped forward to look in between the two specified pews. A second after she did so, she dropped him from her iron grasp so that he fell on the floor. He held back a yelp as he fell onto a particularly sharp piece of glass by biting the inside of his lip and looked up in expectation of the usual primal scream, but she didn't. Instead, she looked down at him in silence, albeit with a very unkindly glint in her eye.

_That's not good, _Jazz thought in the back of his mind as he stood up completely, his height not even two-thirds of the size of the woman standing in front of him.

"Jazz," Eva's mother spoke in the most poorly hidden of tones, sounding somewhat like the pleasantness of having a gong rung in one's ear. "Do you know why I made you the prince that was suitable to marry my daughter?"

Jazz gulped a second time and stayed silent for a few seconds, deciding upon which words to use were the best for the moment.

"Your ladyship . . ." he started off, straining his nerves to keep his teeth from chattering as he spoke. The queen was not to be spoken to without a title unless he was royalty himself, which he was not at this point of time. "I do not know the exact reasons, but I thought that it was Eva's decision instead."

"Yes, her decision swayed me to _think _about your princedom," she grated, "but it was the fact that you had stopped Devan for good that you were made so. You stopped him for good, you said! And this lizard swoops in from nowhere, says that Devan is still _alive_, and steals the ring in front of everyone in this chapel?"

The loudness of her voice gradually rose higher and higher until it surmounted the noisiness of a forest collapsing at once, effectively blowing Jazz further and further away from her as she spoke. Despite having his eardrums blown clear out of his head, he got the message, and his eyes glazed in fear as he unmistakably thought back to the lizard's words: "Devan sends his regards." He hardly had time to register that the queen charged forward and caught him around the throat, lifting him higher and higher until he was over her head.

"YOU LIED TO ME AND EVA, AND MADE A FOOL OUT OF ME AS WELL! IT'S OFF TO THE DUNGEON FOR YOU! GUARDS!" she shouted over her shoulder and in the direction of the main entrance.

An unarmoured contingent of guards came through the door, some stepping through the debris with care and some without, but all of which were rushing over to Queen Earlong hastily.

Lori was unable to stand it anymore; not only was the queen calling her brother a liar, but she was going to lock him up in the dungeon to boot for something that was not even his fault to begin with! Jazz told her the story in its entirety, and she knew for a fact that he was innocent of any lying. Devan had just crawled out of his hiding place like the turtle he is, and that is that.

"You can't do that!" she shouted, thrusting her hand palm outwards in front of the queen as if to halt her from any action.

The queen reared her head towards Lori and gave her a menacing glare.

"Oh? And why not?"

"You know more than most of us what Devan is capable of doing!" Lori uttered loudly, keeping the tone of voice high so that she would, she hoped, shake the queen. "He built not only one, but two battleships in SPACE, and he stole that gem on purpose for some reason! Don't you understand that you need him to finish Devan off for good?"

"No, because you are going to do that in his stead!" roared the queen like a lion, still gripping Jazz by the throat so tightly that he was starting to fade into unconsciousness; he hung on, but just barely.

"M-me?" Lori peeped as her mind soaked in what the queen said, then twisted her face into an angrier expression. "You're crazy if you think I'll go when my brother is in the dungeon!" she spat furiously, tossing her balled fists behind her.

"You will do it, or he will die. It is as simple as that," the queen stated in a matter-of-fact manner, grinning like an ape when she heard Lori lose her edge and loosening the grip ever so slightly on Jazz's throat, causing him to cough as new air went into his lungs.

"I . . . I . . ." Lori spoke softly as she looked at Jazz piteously. She ground her teeth at this one-sided deal that Queen Earlong proposed, but what choice did she have? "I'll do it. . . ."

"Very good," nodded the queen, tossing Jazz into the midst of the group of waiting soldiers that were watching from a distance. "Do this and he will go free, but . . . he will never touch my daughter's hand again, I promise you that!"

Lori turned around, hiding her scowl and a terse nod of her head, and stormed off through the back entrance. Spaz, who was watching from a distance, finally noticed what was going on and followed her, though he tossed a glance over his shoulder to see his brother one more time before the guards locked him away.

"Sis! . . . What are we going to do now?" Spaz asked in a whisper when they were far off on the dirt road back to the castle, his tongue retreating back into his mouth as another mood swing struck him.

"_I_ will take on Devan alone, and you will stay here," she shot angrily back at him. "The last thing I want is _you_ guarding my back like you did back there."

"S-Sis!"

"Don't 'Sis' me! Someone has to save Jazz, and if I stop Devan once and for all in the process, so much the better!"

"But we could all do this together! We could bust him out!"

Lori stopped on a dime and turned around to look into Spaz's eyes. There was no doubt that he was in his logical mood at the moment, and she hesitated from answering with a sharp riposte.

"I'm listening . . ." she spoke flatly yet more softly than her previous tone.

The lizard flew off from the chapel in a worsened state than before, coughing miserably as he traveled and holding his chest in pain. He had no doubt suffered from internal bleeding, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Devan was the only one that could save him from eventually dying from the trauma.

He traveled out of the forest and over the flat, diamond-shaped farmlands that made up the majority of the landscape, heading towards the Vegetable Labyrinth at maximum speed. He almost fell several times from the wound, but each time he got back up and sped towards the overgrown garden with renewed vigor.

He finally got to it, hovering over the large watermelon patches that consisted of the outermost regions of the Labyrinth with its windy, twisted tendrils thicker than his body from head to tail. He had just a bit further into the vegetable forest to go, just a bit further to the aptly named Carrot Copse where the largest carrots he had ever seen jutted out of the ground like skyscrapers. Each of the carrots had their bottoms grow out of the ground, making enormous and thick trunk-esque orange and yellow stalks holding their usual leafy tops above everything in sight. Numerous vines and plants wound around the lower parts of the carrots, struggling for the sunlight that they craved and fought each other for. The lizard could not help but stare at the vegetables in awe before hovering in between a few of the outer carrots and into the very center of the copse.

An enormous laboratory stood within the shadows, covering the entire expanse of the area. Dense vegetation grew over and around much of the building, but there were apparent signs of clipping surrounding windows and skylights in which what little light was able to go through. The lizard noticed an open skylight that was more than enough to hover inside, and went into it at a careful speed.

The room inside was very dark, and had traces of oversized laboratory equipment that stuck out of the gloom at various heights. Gurgling and hissing from steam valves sounded out from afar, as well as clanging that echoed in a way so that it was impossible to tell exactly where it came from. The floor was visible, a strangely pink and silver shadow that he was still hovering over.

Pain ran through his body once again, and the lizard grabbed his stomach. The helicopter blades dove back into his backpack even though he did not touch the ground yet, and the lizard landed painfully onto the floor below, yelping as new pain swept through his body in a river. A shadowy figure stepped out of nowhere and flicked a nearby switch so that only the two of them and a bit of the surrounding area were lit by a bright LED light above their heads.

"You are late," the figure spoke in a wheezy and nasally voice, adjusting his square-rimmed glasses so that they better fit on his long turtle beak. His eyes gleamed with intelligence and ever-present anger, and his teeth, square and bright white, was revealed through a wide-sweeping grin. His skin, smooth and clammy, was a hue of pale green jutting out of a dirt-brown shell with a tanned underbelly. The lizard gulped in fear as he ascended from his painful position, though he was still hunched as he gripped his chest. The person he was standing in front of was no other than Devan Shell, the super-intelligent turtle and owner of the establishment. One of his hands was hanging limply to his side, while the other was resting behind his back for some reason; the lizard paid no heed to his posture, as he had never seen Devan unlike that unless they both were in the latter's office, where Devan folded his scaly hands.

"I . . . know . . ." wheezed the lizard shortly after he lifted himself to his feet. "There were complications."

"Did you get the power gem, Darfus?" Devan asked curtly in a business tone, looking at the lizard without remorse.

The lizard nodded before unzipping his backpack and removing the ring box from it. The slit of the case was glowing with an odd, faint light, ensuring that the diamond inside it was much more than normal.

"Here it is, sir," the lizard spoke hesitantly as he lurched forward, accidently dropping the box on the floor and allowing the ring in its entirety to fall out and snap apart into its separate parts. The lizard coughed more violently than ever and stained the ground beneath him with droplets of fresh blood ejected from his mouth, but Devan paid him little mind as he picked the jewel up and up to his face, smiling into it. "Sir . . . I need your . . . help. I need . . . medical assistance," the lizard gasped in between bouts of coughing, more blood coming out as he spoke.

Devan looked down and adjusted his glasses with his left hand, holding the diamond in his right.

"Yes, you do, don't you?" he spoke with a frown, a faint glimmer of sympathy in his eyes as he watched the lizard in front of him spit out the substance, an irony and coppery scent hitting his nostrils. "Internal damage, if I could guess."

Darfus nodded weakly, getting up from his knees so that he could look his master in the eye.

"Yes, sir. . . ."

"Hmm, I have the medicine that you seek, but I have no use for, nor the patience to use, a failed minion."

"M-master . . . ? What do you mean . . . ?" the lizard wheezed as he backed away hesitantly.

With unnatural speed, Devan pulled his hand from behind him and brought it in front of him; a flash of light shot out of a massively upgraded weapon as reddish-white plasma shot out in a continuous stream, disintegrating the unfortunate lizard in his entirety into yellow, purple, and blue dust before he even had a chance to scream. Devan appeared unfazed by the grisly murder, and simply brushed the powder that meandered onto his gun and arm off without much care at all.

"You have served well, Darfus, but not well enough for my specifications in a henchman. I need somebody that could withstand a Jackrabbit without damage. Somebody with a shell. . . ."

"Someone like me?" spoke a muscularly thick-set turtle in a loud and rumbling basso, his beady black eyes aglow with suppressed enthusiasm at the death of his rival. He stood more than double the height of Devan himself, towering over most of his minions excepting his own kind.

"Yes, someone like you, Tartus," the smaller turtle grinned in his usual manner, his smile spanning from ear to ear. "Now that the power gem is here, you are officially reinstated as my bodyguard. And don't worry, I'll pay you well in return, in food, money, and carnage."

"Ah-h-h, good, I was really looking forward to smashing some heads in," Tartus bellowed in laughter, shaking the lab with his voice so that the glassware in the distance rattled.

"You will, if any rabbits come to steal back my wonderful Diamondus gem," Devan grinned evilly, holding it up in the air until it lit the area further with its multi-hued brilliance. "And I know just the one who would do it, if your predecessor here"—he pointed towards the pile of ash in front of him—"didn't do his job thoroughly: Jazz Jackrabbit. Go and get your accessories . . . he won't be far behind."

Tortus smiled, folding his arms in a determined manner, and walked out of the illuminated area so that he was nothing more than a shadow in the dark again.

_Finally,_ thought Devan as he held the diamond underneath his arm and held out his hand to flick off the light switch_, the power jewel is mine! With this and the Time Machine in my disposal, I will finally rid this and every world from those floppy-eared vermin once and for all! _The finger fell and the light stopped illuminating the area, but Devan's eyes still glowed with vehement hatred and the joy of success!


	3. Chapter 3:  The Castle

**The Diamond of Two Destinies: Chapter 3**

Jazz lay completely motionless, suspended above the ground and against the wall by a chain that led up into the gloom that was the dungeon's ceiling. The shackles on his wrists would have bruised and cut at the skin had his bracers been taken off, but they still ached when he desired to shift to another position, only to find that there was no another position to shift to. There were shackles tied onto both of his feet as well, weighing him down so that he felt like an organic part of the chains above and below him himself.

He was loathe to breathing in this filthy chamber, the insides of which still reeked of the stench of half-eaten bones, critter waste, and the decomposition process of a dead rabbit body that lay against the wall on the other side of the room, casting its hapless, empty eyes towards the ground with its lolling head. He pitied the poor creature and wondered what he did to deserve such a fate, but whatever it was, it had to have been better than what he did.

He half-believed the queen's words that he had lied about Devan's defeat, and accepted his fate from time to time before waking from his trance-like state shouting "It's not my fault!" into the darkness. In truth, it was not his fault. He had smashed the ingenious turtle's previous plans into dust, turned reptilian bases across the galaxy into smouldering ruins, prevented Carrotus from being torn in half by the enormous Twin Battleships that he had sabotaged and imploded, and he was welcomed back into society as a hero, a role-model for everyone. And even after those feats, he was now a prisoner inside the Carrotus castle, rejected by the planet that he served and swore to protect.

He blinked back tears and raised his head, groaning bitterly. He wanted revenge on the dastardly turtle, to blast him right between the eyes for what had been done to him, but knew that it was not a possibility. Nobody had ever escaped the dungeon before, and even if Lori somehow actually stopped the insidious being, he was sure that the queen would throw both of his siblings into the dungeon with him in the end out of pure spite.

Time seemed to stand still, passing by with only his heartbeat and his breath for countable intervals. He tried to keep tally of them to pass the time, as well as the number of stones, large and small, that made up the wall in front of him, but he constantly lost his focus when the pervasive stench of the air struck his nostrils with higher intensity thanks to the draft from outside the cell door.

The light that shone through the barred window in the metal-plated door started to get brighter, and Jazz craned his head towards it in puzzlement. _Is that an_ _evening guard in charge of feeding the prisoners? _he wondered as some new hope sprung into his mind. He was a Jackrabbit, and was faster and stronger than most, if not all, of the other rabbits his size. He could attempt a breakout if he was free to eat on his lonesome, but guessing from his current position—dangling from the ceiling with his hands and legs tied so that he could hardly feel either set of limbs anymore—he knew that such a thing might have been wishful thinking. The light was close now, but instead of hearing the heavy, unpracticed footfalls of the guards that usually stomped around when a light passed by two times before, it was much quieter, like the scurrying of the unusually large rats that no doubt claimed all of the floors of the lower castle.

He winced at the brightness when a pitch-covered torch passed into his view outside the door, and shielded his eyes for a second or two by turning his head the other way, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light. When he returned his gaze, he saw a very familiar face sticking through the bars and looking towards him.

"Spaz!" he croaked in excitement, dislodging the clog in his throat with a quiet cough a smidgeon afterwards.

"Hey, Bro!" Spaz exclaimed happily as he stuck his head through the bars, a feat no normal rabbit would accomplish, without the slightest hint of disgust at the rank smell that hovered inside the room. It is amazing what the inability to breathe through one's nose can do for one's well-being. "Lori and I are here to bust you out!"

"Be quiet, Spaz!" Jazz heard Lori hiss lowly from behind the door. "Do you want the guards to catch us _before _we make our escape?"

"Why not? It'll be more fun that way!" Spaz added, his tongue spilling out of his mouth like it always did.

Jazz heard the sound of his sister pounding her head with her palm, and wished that he could do the same.

"How about getting me out of here before we argue?" Jazz proposed in as calm a voice as possible.

"Sure thing, Bro!" Spaz yelled before squeezing his head through the bars again and knocking down the door, hinges and all, with a well-aimed kick.

A wave of refreshingly cleaner air struck Jazz amiably, and he breathed a relieving sigh before looking over to his siblings through the now open doorway, Spaz with his usual unforgettable stupid smirk on his face and Lori with an unimpressed stare towards the thick cell door currently lying on the ground.

"I already unlocked the door, you know," she stated in the same unimpressed manner as before, shaking the keys so that they rattled on a gaoler's keychain before stepping into the cell with her arm over her nose. "Gosh, this place reeks. . . ."

Jazz grinned before dryly commenting towards the body on the other side of the room, "I blame my old tenant over there for that."

Lori smirked a simple smile before leaning the pitch torch on the wall and taking out a black gun from a holster on her side that Jazz did not realize she had before, shaped so that it looked like a large, elongated egg mounted on a triggered handle. Thin red streaks stretched across it like a branching network, making the gun seem more like a toy than anything lethal, and had a red semicircle above the purely pitch-black end of the weapon. She raised it so that it never aimed towards him, and fired a thin, condensed beam of light with pinpoint accuracy at the span between his handcuffs. The shackles broke instantly when the hot beam of pure energy touched it, and Jazz fell down onto the ground on his feet with minimum effort, though the chains on his feet clinked noisily as he did so.

"Thanks, Sis, it seems I owe you another debt today," he spoke amiably, stretching his arms out so that his aching muscles would relax from being set in that hanging position all that time.

"Forget about those other debts," she spoke softly while looking down towards her feet, her hands falling back to her sides. "They didn't amount to anything anyways. . . ."

Jazz gave her a quizzical glance for several seconds before realizing what she meant.

"Lori, what happened today wasn't your fault, but Devan's. Don't beat yourself up for something you didn't do," he assured her, frowning with concern.

"I know . . ." she murmured before raising her arms once again and firing another blast of energy at the shackles beneath him, shattering them like before, and tossing a flash of metal towards him. Jazz caught it with his left hand and glanced down into his palm, finding a long-toothed key within it that seemed the perfect size for the cuffs around his wrists. "We should get you out of here quickly, before the guards come and find—"

"HEY GUYS! BIRDIES!" ejaculated Spaz from outside the doorway, pointing further down the corridor with dribble coming down from the side of his mouth.

The two remaining siblings' eyes narrowed and recognized that this was not a good sign as they heard the fluttering of distant, fleshy wings heading in their general direction. Lori spent no hesitation to rush over to the side of the door and yank Spaz out of the hallway and into the cell, while Jazz quickly thrust the key into the locks of his cuffs and relieved them from his limbs to run soundlessly over to his siblings and peer around the wall with them.

Monstrous purple bats came around the corner of the sparsely torch-lit hall, screeching, flapping their wings, and snapping their jaws as if they were bloodthirsty predators dying for a meal. Everyone—including Spaz, who retracted his tongue and drool into his mouth again—knew that this was not a good sign. Bats were difficult to fool with their supersensory hearing, and were sure to notice the jutting door that Spaz had kicked down.

Jazz noticed that Lori had made a sign to the both of them regarding something about a gun, but it was so fast that he hardly made out the message before she leapt out into the center of the hallway. Spaz must have gotten the message, as he handed Jazz's gun—a long and blue weapon that looked strikingly similar to a Flit gun, only with a gun handle instead of a hand-pump—to its respective owner; Jazz speculated whether he should ask where Spaz got it from, seeming that his brother was empty-handed previously, but his better judgment said that he really didn't want to know.

Before he even got to cock his weapon, he heard and saw, in that order, Lori fire a few intense beams of light from her black gun. Terrible, angry screeches sounded out from the hallway in front of her, building up against the echoing stone walls and filling the hallway with din. Jazz joined in and fired a few rounds of semi-automatic blasts of compacted yellow energy, disintegrating the frenzied beasts into their base molecular structures within a blink of an eye just as Lori's gun did. With the two of them firing, the approaching swarm of bats was turned into little more than molecular matter.

"Come on, we have to move!" Lori commanded, perking her ears in both directions to hear for any sign of activity. "Others are sure to hear this!"

Jazz nodded tersely towards her and focused his attention at Spaz, who pulled out a green, strange-looking blaster from behind his back.

_Seriously, how does he do that?_ Jazz thought with a puzzled expression on his face before returning his gaze towards Lori, who was staring down the hall opposite where the bats came from with unease. He felt useless, in a way, or rather _in_ the way. She showed every sign of alertness at this time, but he was, the previous saviour of the planet, required rescuing? He has certainly lost most of his edge since his return to Carrotus, but that was something he had to correct.

Lori ran ahead of her brothers with her super-critter speed, making it to the opposite end of the tunnel in a flash before peering around the corner. The others were quick to follow her, and after a short signal, Jazz took the next point and repeated the process in an uneventful manner, to his relief. When it was Spaz's turn to go around the corner and the red rabbit had actually done so, they heard a loud "eep" sound out from the passage and ran to his side, their guns pointed up and their fingers ready on the triggers. Looking left and right, they found nothing except shadows and torched walls.

"What's the big idea?" Lori spoke angrily towards Spaz, giving him a glare while lowering her gun to her side.

"L-l-l-l! . . ." was all that came out of his mouth when he pointed downwards towards a small, green, and crested lizard staring at all three of them with large, red, froglike eyes. The entire thing looked more like a crocodile than anything else, with the snout, the stubby and scaly body on top of infinitesimal legs, and, of course, the ever-encompassing toothy grin. The only things that were different were the small, bat-like wings on its back that seemed so disproportionate to its body that they looked useless.

Jazz couldn't help but snigger at the sight of the thing, and neither could Lori, though she laughed aloud and unchecked. The creature looked at the both of them with a very definite frown, its scaly eyebrows surprisingly tilting downwards, causing Jazz to stop laughing immediately after noticing.

"It's adorable!" the yellow rabbit spoke in hysterics, kneeling down as if to stroke the funny-looking lizard and not paying attention to its visage.

"Um, Lori, stop laughing," Jazz warned while tapping his sister's shoulder. Looking down at the grumpy crocodile made him certain that it was getting angrier, and who could blame it?

"Aw, but it is so-o-o!—" she laughed while ascending and looking over to Jazz.

The lizard started to gag and cough before spitting out a small tongue of flame from its mouth. Spaz quickly leapt away as if he saw it coming, but it was impossible to tell whether he actually meant to do that or not, given his, well, Spazzy demeanour and the tongue flopped out. Jazz grabbed his sister around the waist with his right arm and leapt out of the way with her to avoid the blast of fire that was aimed at her, his fur just barely far enough away from the flames to not catch fire themselves. They fell to the cold, dirt floor on their hands and knees, and hardly had time to react before a second blast of flames was thrown at them. They both jumped out of the way again in the nick of time and landed further away than before.

"That thing's a dragon?" Lori shouted, searching for her gun but realizing that she dropped it right next to the creature.

"Seems like," agreed Jazz, breathing heavily and raising the blue weapon till it was level with the dragon's head.

The lizard did not take kindly to the action, and lifted itself off of the floor with its bat-like wings to charge right at him. It did not get far when a shot was heard and the dragon disintegrated into its base particles.

Jazz blinked in surprise, realizing that he was not the one that pulled the trigger, and looked over to Spaz. The red rabbit stood perfectly still with his hands and gun outstretched towards where the dragon was. His face had a harder, more determined look on it than he saw last time, and all of the madness that he had previously seemed to no longer be there. It had been a while since he last saw that expression—in fact, a very long time since he first taught his siblings the art of gunslinging, a skill even the guards of Carrotus had never learned. They were the only ones on the planet that were known to use that hated weapon, that alien technology which had been brought from off-world, and Jazz hoped that he would keep it that way.

"Nice shot, Spaz. Another second and I might have been dragon bait," he spoke with a smile, lowering the gun and wiping his hand across his forehead.

Spaz looked over to him, grinned from ear to ear—yet another technique that was impossible for any other rabbit to do—and spun around, whistling as he did. Jazz shook his head, the smile still set across his face, and glanced over to Lori, who by now was looking at him with the same manner. A slight blush was visible through the fur on her cheeks, and he guessed at the reason before she cleared her throat.

"Thank you, Jazz," she spoke softly, pulling him into a hug and releasing him soon after. "I would have been hasenpfeffer, had you not saved me as well. . . ."

"What are siblings for?" he answered with a blush of his own building up, scratching behind his ears in slight embarrassment. "But that is a small favour compared to breaking me out of jail."

Her smile welled up before she walked over to where her gun fell and picked it up.

"Come on, we have to go . . ." she murmured softly, so much so that it seemed like a whisper in the dark hallway that they were in, but her voice picked up afterwards. "We have to go before they sound the alarm, and then all Infernos will blow!"

The company continued through the maze of hallways without hindrance, and this time all three traveled together with Lori in the lead. This was quite suitable for Jazz, seeming that his sister had the best memory of the group and that Spaz was unable to keep any worthwhile memory trapped inside his head for long. He never bothered to ask her directly, but she must have studied the intricacies of the tunnels before this rescue had ever taken place. That reminded him of the lapse of time that must have taken place. When was now? What was today? His stomach growled as if it hadn't ingested for quite some time, but what do stomachs know, anyhow?

His thoughts were broken when he saw an enormous crossroad with tunnels leading in every direction and a thick mass of signs pointing in the direction of every one of them. Lori skidded to a stop, and Spaz and he followed suit. She looked more than a little puzzled at the situation, and there was no doubt that she had made a small blunder along the way.

"We're lost, aren't we!" Spaz bellowed behind her, pounding the earthy ground with balled fists. "We're going to die in this tunnel!"

Lori sighed and turned around to face Spaz with a glare that could kill.

"We have only stopped for five seconds and you have lost all hope already?" she yelled at him in annoyance.

Jazz shook his head as another argument ensued between brother and sister. He was sick and tired of it for the longest time, but surprisingly it did not bother him so much at the moment. _Jail time makes anything seem enjoyable, I guess_, he thought with a rolling of the eyes, though it _still_ was annoying.

"Okay, knock it off," he barked, a hint of laughter not too carefully concealed in his undertone. "All we have to do is find the right path, right? A crossroad like this one means that we are either near an exit or—"

"Or still close to the middle of it," Lori grumbled, looking around the area a bit. "But there are signs everywhere! How are we going to find which one to go down? I've never seen this before on Eva's map."

Jazz widened his eyes (even though they were pretty wide to begin with, given the low light of the area) as he stared at Lori. Sure, he guessed she had studied a map of the place, but—of all rabbits—Eva had the map?

"Oh, of course," Lori responded after he spoke up about his question. "I'm not surprised that Eva hasn't told you, but she's been down here a few times. Knowing Evangelia, she is probably trying to groom Eva into the 'perfect queen'."

Jazz nodded and grinned at the usage of the queen's name, though he was somewhat sickened that Eva was named after her. _Nope, no irony there,_ he reflected with a chuckle.

"Guys . . . look at this! . . ." Spaz exclaimed a bit softer than usual over his shoulder, now perched in front of a large stack of signs set apart of the main batch. Sure, he can't read, but something about the sign filled him with agitation or unease. It was hard differentiating it with him.

Curious, both Jazz and Lori walked over to where their loud brother was stationed and read from the topmost sign down to the bottom. Jazz read it aloud so that Spaz could understand what it meant.

" 'The answer you seek is in the wind. Yeah, YOU, you three readers! Can I make it any simpler for you? Use your heads!

" 'Now that I have your attention, I'd like to make a statement. You know that there are some strange things out there, right? I'm one of them!

" 'What other signs out there can'—I've had enough of this!" Jazz shouted while shaking his head. "This is pointless!"

"But what if it has a point?" Spaz queried, looking at the sign with a sort of smile. "Please read on!"

Lori smacked her forehead from behind Jazz, and Jazz himself sighed, but he decided to consent to his brother's whim:

" 'What other signs out there can talk? You'd have to be at least sane to stop at the "can," but it is necessary for you to read on.

" 'Since I'm feeling generous to you for reading me, I have three cases of BOUNCY BUMPER BOOMERS at my stumpy post!

" 'Go wild. Signed, Mrs. Sign. Yeah, I went there.' "

Jazz scratched his head as all three looked down at the floor. Sure enough, as the sign said, there were three boxes in front of the sign post, labeled on the top in large golden letters: "BOUNCY BUMPER BOOMERS." Quickly, their stupefied faces were doubly so, and Spaz fell flat on his face in reverence to this uncanny stack of nailed-down wood.

"Mrs. Sign, I thank you for this gift!" he spoke in a similar manner, adding a bow. "What else do you know, O knowing one?"

The sign said nothing, as it was an uncanny stack of nailed-down wood, but on the very last board there was—out of nowhere—inscribed a message which Lori intermittently read in between her giggles at the sight of Spaz: " 'Cheese is green on Tuesday.' " Her laughter died off soon after.

"I don't know what is happening, but if a sentient sign starts writing to you, you might as well listen to it," Jazz after several seconds of silence, sticking his left index finger in his mouth and popping it out again, wetting his finger with his saliva.

"What are you doing?" inquired Lori, tilting her head in confusion towards Jazz.

"I just got an idea," he explained, sticking his finger into the air vertically. "Don't you feel the wind in here?"

Lori paused for a few seconds and nodded, feeling a slight gust brush past her fur for the first time.

"I think this is what this . . . er, _Mrs_. Sign was talking about. It smells fresher than when we were back in the tunnels, doesn't it? So we must be at least close to the exit."

Lori's eyes lit up in understanding and popped her finger in and out of her mouth like Jazz did.

"It feels . . . like it is coming in that direction?" she inquired, pointing towards the furthest tunnel and looking over to Jazz for assurance.

"I agree," Jazz spoke with a nod before looking at Spaz strangely. The red rabbit was leaning over the boxes and taking out one of its contents, studying it with a bemused look on his face. "So what are these 'bouncy bumper boomers,' Spaz?"

"Beats me! Look!" the spastic brother answered, tossing what he had in his hands over to where Jazz was, only to have it land halfway in between them.

Surprisingly, the object bounced off of the dirt floor and towards Jazz's head at the same speed as when it was thrown. Even more surprisingly, Jazz caught it with an outstretched hand. A small gnawing of pain lanced up his arm from the catch, and he looked down at the strange and bulbous object that he had caught. It looked like an oversized blue pill capsule, following an elliptical pattern with the exception of a black band in the middle that seemed to be of a different, perhaps metallic, substance. The blue exterior seemed incredibly hard when Jazz squeezed it, yet had a rubbery feel to it as well. It was little wonder that it bounced off of the floor and pained his hand.

"These are interesting and all, but what good are they to us?" he questioned, handing Lori the capsule directly instead of tossing it.

An uproarious din of barking orders and trampling feet came from the tunnel which they came from, and all of the Jackrabbits turned their heads towards the noise.

"I don't know, but we should go," she uttered fearfully, pocketing the orb within the backpack she had slung over her shoulder, something that Jazz did not recognize earlier in the dim light. Spaz did the same with the boxes—well, sort of—when he placed them into nothingness behind his back. _Honestly, I need to know how he does that_, Jazz thought, grinning through clamped lips regardless of the danger that they were facing. "We need to get out of this madhouse."

All three took off down the tunnel where the wind was blowing, and sure enough there was a stairwell leading further up and, after a minute or two of ascending, into a room of immense magnitude. Jazz rubbed the water from his eyes generated by the light shining through an open window and looked around: sandstone walls decorated the area as if it were meant to impress people, but he did not see a soul with the exception of his siblings. He questioned the purpose of putting such an opulent room in front of the entrance of a dungeon, but decided that the dungeon must have been built after this was constructed. The ceiling was high and flat, yet the walls were not connected to it, and in the distance above them he could see statues of various shapes and sizes mounted on colossal columns, but most of them were of only one figure: Queen Earlong herself, supporting the ceiling like Atlas held up the sky. That brought a grin to his face, but he swiftly recomposed himself.

"What is this place?" he questioned while looking over to Lori on his right.

"According to the blueprints that Eva gave us," Lori answered, "this is the actual dungeon, and the tunnels that you were in were catacombs of a bygone era. But as for now, I have no idea where we are. . . ."

"Catacombs. . . . I never knew we had any. Wait, we took a different stairway than you did?" Jazz asked in confusion.

Spaz tossed an idle glance around the area in absolute silence as the other two conversed, but when he recognized Lori said that she did not know where they were ten seconds after she said it, he ejaculated at the top of his shrill, shrill voice, "WE'RE LOST?" right in the ears of his two siblings, solving his brother's question.

"Shut your hole!" Lori spat, rubbing her ears and glaring mercilessly towards her red brother. That did not last long until she groaned a sigh. "So what now?" she asked, looking over to Jazz.

"We can't go back, or we'll get lost again. I say we keep going and hope for the best."

She nodded with a hesitant smile before cocking her weapon anew; Jazz did the same, but Spaz simply rolled around on the ground like a dog with his tongue out.

"Let's go," Jazz stated, rushing down the hall with Lori following soon after.

"Eh? Wait for me!" Spaz exclaimed, getting off of the floor, rolling up his tongue, and flying after his siblings.

The three continued running for a little less than half an hour, their ears ringing with the clanging from the castle belfry that alerted the area of a prisoner that had escaped. The virgin bells sounded out chaotically due to unpracticed hands, and apparently filled all of the Jackrabbits with unease. Along the way, they came across several pitfalls and traps that were not altogether hard to traverse but rather incredibly surprising to see. Lori seemed shocked, but both Jazz and Spaz seemed unfazed by the situation.

The castle surrounding them grew brighter and brighter by the minute when the three got closer to the side of the incredibly spacious building, and this brought them all new hope.

"We're almost there, I think!" Lori shouted in a joyous tone towards her brothers while firing at and disintegrating a distant screaming bat. Looking ahead of her, she saw both Jazz and Spaz nod towards her before revolving around a corner, and she swiftly did the same before she ran into something that caused her to topple over.

"Ow, Spaz!" she uttered angrily as she saw the red rabbit right next to her, and on the ground to boot. "Don't stop on a dime like that!"

He said nothing in response, but rather pointed in front of him. Following his finger, she noticed that Jazz had stopped as well and was hunched over with his left index finger on the ground.

"What are you doing?" she inquired, huffing slightly as she was out of breath from the brisk run. "We need to get out now or—"

"Something's coming," he spoke in a quieter voice, lifting himself off of the ground and looking at her. "Something big."

She tilted her head in confusion before she felt a tremor that was reminiscent to a footstep from underneath her. She hardly had time to say anything when a door in front of the three opened up to its fullest extent, revealing the figure of none other than Eva's mother.

Her face twisted into that of pure hatred—flaring nostrils, contorting facial features, and bloodshot eyes that emitted a lethal glare towards the three rabbit siblings on the other side of the room. She stepped into the room with feet pounding the ground like an elephant's before she stopped just a few metres short of the doorway.

"Lori!" she roared, pointing a thick index finger towards the yellow rabbit. "How dare you go against my orders to rescue this . . . this piece of trash!"

Lori felt her fists ball up around the gun in front of her and casting a glower towards the speaker. She did not mind ignoring orders and taking the heat from it, but . . .

"Jazz is not trash!" she riposted, her hands tearing apart from each other as she tossed them behind her.

"Then he is worse than garbage, as are the rest of you!" Evangelina shouted back, grabbing an immensely thick and wide ornamental tower shield off of a nearby wall and inserting her arm inside of the leather enarmes. From behind where she stood, several royal guard members that had followed her closed the thick iron door behind her off, locking it with a loud clank; so much for guards. "You Jackrabbits have failed me completely and utterly, and for that you will pay the ultimate price!"

"Birdies?" exclaimed Spaz in a pitch reminiscent to a startled squeal, his eyes narrowing before Jazz clonked him on the side of the head with an open palm.

"No! DEATH!" she screamed, unleashing a sonic wave that would have halted a stampeding rhinoceros within its tracks. The green and red rabbits that were unfortunate enough to be in its rippling path were knocked off their feet and blown backwards several metres, whereas Lori held her footing and slid back significantly less than the others.

"Are you insane?" Lori shouted back towards her after, looking over her shoulder for an instant back at where her groaning brothers were. They were okay and getting up, but were just as surprised as she was of the queen's vocal strength.

"You chose the path of your brother, you traitor!" Evangelina bellowed, glaring above her shield menacingly towards her. "I assigned you to kill Devan, and you instead unleash your villainous brother!"

"I will not do it without Jazz!" the yellow rabbit riposted. "I will do my duty still, but I will not leave him in your hands!"

"INSOLENT GIRL!" the queen roared, unleashing another scream soon afterwards.

Lori fired a round of shots in the queen's direction in self-defence before bracing for the impact of the blast. Her brothers did the same, and all three held their ground as the air blew into and past them. The energy shots themselves passed through unhindered, bouncing off of the queen's shield as she lifted it at the last moment.

"What are you doing?" Jazz shouted, running up beside her and holding her gun by the barrel towards the ground.

"Relax, Jazz," she scowled, pointing down at the settings of the gun. "It's not a lethal amount."

Jazz bit his lip lightly and looked down at his own gun. He understood what she was trying to do-enough shots of a setting as low as hers would incapacitate the victim for a few hours instead of disintegrate him entirely, but firing upon his future mother-in-law was sure to not help bring him and Eva closer together, right? Sighing lightly, he turned his own weapon to the same power level as Lori's and cocked it before hand-signing his brother to do the same.

The queen on the other end of the room was furious, stamping her monstrous foot on the ground and causing the entire room to shake. A few stone bricks fell here and there from the ceiling, doing little damage to the floor as they shattered against it, but Lori knew that a single blow from one on the head could be fatal for any of them. Apparently, Evangelina knew this too, and stomped the ground again in expectation of more lovely stones descending and smashing into the heads of her enemies. Well, it did the first, definitely, and the second in Spaz's case as one descended down on his rabbity head with a hollow clunk.

"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-OW!" Spaz yelped in pain, not that there was much of it since he had a brain the size of a butterfly cocoon but because the brick literally was the only thing on his mind at the time.

Lori and Jazz glanced over to their brother worriedly, and after recognising that he was otherwise okay, both fired upon the queen before she could stamp her feet again. Two of the shots of white and yellow light struck her upper arm before she lifted the shield to protect her, dissipating into her thick self and not leaving a mark on her. Eva's mother growled in pain as the energy seeped into her, backing up defensively. Shots continued to rain down on her pressing her closer and closer to the giant hall door.

"Jazz, keep her occupied! Spaz, get out the Bouncy Boomers!" she ordered, ceasing her firing and pulling off the backpack she had slung over her shoulders to take out the one she placed in there. Spaz immediately extracted the box from behind him-_how does he do that? _she internally questioned-and held it out in front of him with a hint of disgust on his face. Jazz continued his barrage, firing at full automatic at the shield.

"What are you going to do with them, Sis?" Spaz exclaimed in confusion. "Don't try eating them; they aren't tasty like birdies!"

Lori rolled her eyes as she sprinted over to him and opened the box. To her surprise, what met her gaze were two different sizes of those strange Bouncy Boomer things, one especially small like a bullet and the other the size of a granade like the one she had in her hands. She didn't have time for curiosity, she knew, and therefore she placed her blaster away to quickly snatch two of the larger ones with her right hand.

"What are you doing back there?" Jazz called out, looking over his shoulder towards her.

"This!" she answered, lobbing the one she had previously in the queen's direction. The Boomer followed the trajectory perfectly as it bounced across the floor, apparently gaining speed after every bounce instead of losing it, and soon barreled into the shield, launching the queen back several inches until she hit the sturdy door behind her with a solid "oof."

"No way! . . ." she heard Jazz utter, causing her to laugh before running over to him and holding out one of the two left in front of him.

"Try it," she grinned. "It's rather refreshing, actually."

He looked at her as if she grew a third eye before grinning like a gargoyle and exchanging his gun to his left hand. Grabbing the item and feeling its weight for a second, he launched it with all of his might towards the queen along with Lori. The two Boomers pinged across the floor almost melodiously, gaining speed again as they went along. The queen, surprised by the sounds, looked up from her hunched position and over the shield to see what was going on. Big mistake, she realised as one of the bouncing blue objects struck her dead-centre in the forehead. Tottering, she fell backwards into the door, the full brunt of her weight snapping the bolts of the door clean through so that the entire portal fell with her with a colossal bang.

Jazz and Lori watched the entire thing happen, then looked at each other in complete dumbfounderment until uproarious laughter sounded out from behind them. Spaz must have had quite the good time watching the scene, and Lori couldn't help but do the same at the queen's collapse either.

"Good shot," Lori managed to get out, wiping a tear out of her eye from laughing so hard.

"B-but what if I killed her?" Jazz sputtered with his eyes narrowing into tiny circles.

A loud and nasally snort emanating from the giant gaping hole freed him from whatever guilt he felt of killing the matriarch of the land, and he let out a sigh of relief that she was only unconscious.

"Personally, I think you would have done the world a favour," Lori giggled, "but we have to go!" Drawing her gun from the holster she had at her hip, she looked over to the others and nodded towards the entrance. "You coming?"

Jazz grinned and toted his blue gun over his shoulder while Spaz stopped guffawing and rolled out his tongue again. Together, the three ran down past the snoozing queen and down the hallway to freedom.

"So what's our next move?" Jazz spoke when the true exit of the castle was in sight, looking towards Lori for assurance.

"We go to Rabbit Town," Lori answered, smiling back at him. "If we are to stop Devan, we need additional help, and I think we both know just the person."

Jazz looked back in front of him with a smile. Yes, he would be very helpful indeed.


	4. Chapter 4: Spaz's Madness

_**The Diamond of Two Destinies: Chapter 4**_

Each of the Jackrabbits ran their fastest along the path towards Rabbit Town, becoming nothing more than a faint blur alongside other faint blurs; it did not take long, however, for Jazz to tire. After being detained in his cell for so long without food or water, Lori could not blame him for his weakness and decided that a respite was in order. If they were to make it to town before sunset, they had to keep moving. Spaz led the group, followed by Lori and Jazz in the rear. The latter weren't particularly enjoying it, however.

"Could you pick up your feet any better?" Lori huffed towards Spaz, who consistently dragged his feet in the sandy road as if he were trying to dredge the Sahara Desert, wherever that was. One hand was held over her mouth, while the other was soundly placed on her hip, and the owner of each glared at him through the billowing dust that trailed him.

"I'm hungry . . . !" Spaz grumbled, followed by an ear-splitting yowl from his stomach. He grinned shortly afterwards, though neither Jazz nor Lori could tell whether it was because of the loud rumble within him or the afterwards, watery belch without him.

"Pfft, you're hungry? But you just ate three hours ago!" continued Lori, none too pleased and now gagging on the dust in the air. "Jazz should be the one hungry, not you . . . and stop walking!"

Spaz did exactly so, halting mid-step and glancing behind him. This did not aid him much balance-wise, however, when he tripped and flew magnificently into the road headfirst. If a travelling trio of judges had seen such a thing, they surely would have given the fall a near-perfect score.

"I've a small stomach! I need all the food I can get!" Spaz sputtered through the dust that coated his face, turning around again.

"There are carrots all around you! Who's going to miss one if it will make you stop complaining?" Lori retorted.

"I don't like carrots!" Spaz exclaimed at the top of his lungs, flailing his limbs like a kit that didn't receive what it wanted. "I don't like 'em! I don't like 'em! I don't like 'em!"

Jazz rubbed his eyes in frustration, especially starting to miss his cell about now, and glanced around at the taunting carrots. The field's aroma tempted him to eat his fill, but that was not a wise action to do . . . not without having serious and painful cramps in his stomach. His siblings' yapping did not help at all with his mood either, and he felt an ache writhe and grind inside him anyways.

"Would you both just clam up?" he groaned, separating the two with a push on both of their chests. "We just escape getting captured and all you guys do is yell at each other!"

Spaz and Lori exchange glances before shattering them simultaneously, facing their backs toward each other with a pair of added huffs. Jazz groaned and furrowed his eyebrows, a tough thing to do when one was completely covered in fur.

"C'mon, you aren't five-year-olds anymore, guys, so hop to it and make up!" he continued, folding his arms.

Lori groaned lowly and turned towards Spaz with her head hung low before she raised her onyx eyes to meet his, but to her dismay he still had his back turned. Even though she was entirely ticked off, she muttered an "I'm sorry" over to him.

"Huh? What?" he responded, holding his hand up to his ears with a goofy smile on his face. This was not because he was joking around like anyone would have thought, but because he really was sidetracked by the distant whistling of bluebirds in the fields.

Lori scowled at him and looked over to Jazz, who aptly shrugged his shoulders. Sighing humbly, she nodded and glanced down at the ground.

"I'm sorry," she enunciated with crystal clarity, making sure that her idiotic brother would hear her. "I shouldn't have yelled."

Jazz nodded in approval, and both looked at Spaz for a reaction. It was a pity, though, that it wasn't the reaction they were hoping for.

"Birdies? BIRDIES!" the dingy red rabbit ejaculated, tossing a larger cloud of dust as he rushed off further down the road.

"And here I thought we would have a breakthrough . . ." Jazz coughed after he involuntarily breathed in a lungful of road dust.

"The twit!" Lori managed to spat out after several gags of her own, glaring at the flailing pile of rabbit limbs that flew aimlessly into the western carrot field. "And I just gave him an apology too . . . it's just not fair!"

"Just think of leaving him on Deserto for the remainder of his life. That usually helps my nerves calm down," Jazz responded with such light composure that Lori could not help but shoot a glance at him.

"Over there, it wouldn't be much of a punishment," Lori grumbled. "He would have as much sand to kick as he'd like."

Jazz could not restrain himself from laughing, and Lori did the same, albeit in a quieter manner.

"In retrospect, you're right," he grinned after a short while, stepping off of the path in Spaz's direction, "but at least he's no longer on the road. Let's go check in on the ignorant wad of fur we call a brother, shall we? I'm sure he'll be enjoying himself around the birds."

She nodded, ruffling the back of her ponytail absent-mindedly as he trekked into the nearby carrot field. She followed along, looking down at the greenery that flooded the area. She felt slightly hungry herself after a long and brisk run, but she came to the same conclusion as Jazz earlier. How he could cope with no food or water was beyond her.

The walk did not take very long before the two met up with Spaz again, the latter of which was trying his best to call a bluebird down with his absurdly terrible whistling. It could hardly have been considered such, after all, if it were as shrill and monotonous as squealing of an ocean whelk.

"Spaz, you can stop now," Jazz groaned, tossing a disinterested glare at his brother. The red rabbit did exactly so, ending the abhorrent performance with a wide grin, a whippoorwill, and a very awkward twirl.

"Hey, Bro!" he exclaimed, not recognising what kind of pain it wrought on every living creature in a three-hundred-metre radius. "Listen, let's stop here for a while! I need a good meal!"

The two siblings rolled their eyes simultaneously.

"You can always eat at Zen's place. He always has something in his pantry this time of year," Jazz spoke, his voice starting to lose its calm.

"But Zen's cooking is worse than yours! I don't want to eat over there!"

Lori winced and stepped away from Jazz as he started to simmer. His food was not bad . . . well, in comparison to _certain _death. Though the eldest sibling knew this and vowed to never touch a cooking appliance again, Spaz continued to rant about the one time he treated the Jackrabbit siblings to dinner, and the story lived on, spoken in every ear on Carrotus. Jazz never took any mentioning of the tale gently.

"His cooking . . . worse than mine . . ." he uttered lowly, emitting a look that could kill.

"Well, yeah, as hard it is to believe! I've doubted for so long, but just last summer—!"

If an egg were cracked over Jazz's forehead, it would have been ready to serve before it struck fur or skin.

"Let me handle this," Lori intervened, tossing her hand in front of Jazz before he could take a step forward and walking towards the red rabbit. Spaz let out a yelp as one of his floppy ears was grabbed, and felt himself yanked backwards before being turned about.

"Hey, what gives?" he yowled furiously, rubbing his injured lesser limb.

"Are you even trying to get yourself maimed?" she hissed quietly. "Just do whatever it is you do, shut up, and leave before you do anything else stupid! Jazz and I can take care of things on our own now."

"But . . . but you guys need me!" retorted the other, his tongue, previously out and flapping in the light wind, now retreating back into his maw.

"According to whom?" Lori growled, glancing over his shoulder and looking over to Jazz for an instant. He was watching the both of them with a puzzled look, and she inwardly cursed Spaz's big mouth. "So far, you've been nothing but a nuisance; I could have saved Jazz by myself."

"And I suppose the dragon shot itself, Lori?" Jazz uttered as he stepped directly behind Spaz, causing both of them to leap slightly in the air. He shook his head as they reeled to face him.

"Well . . . no, but—"

" 'But' nothing! He shot it before we both were seriously injured; why, we both would be hanging in prison or even dead had he not intervened!" the eldest sibling continued.

Lori scowled as she looked at her younger brother. Though it was true that Spaz shot the strange crocodile dragon, she was almost positive that both Jazz's and her instincts would have saved them from harm . . . almost. She bit down on her lip and looked away, feeling slightly defeated.

"I won't bother asking for apologies, but I will not tolerate problems between you two, so you'll have to bear with each other. Is that understood?"

Lori did not have to glance up to know that Jazz's eyes were focused on her. Though the more emotional part of her wanted to cry, she managed to hold back from tearing up. She was a warrior . . . a proud Jackrabbit, and Jackrabbits don't cry no matter what they are up against. Her teeth ground deeper into her lip, the pain intensifying so that her muddled thoughts became clearer. Finally, she spoke in a soft, clear voice after turning to face him, "Understood. . . ."

Jazz elicited a small smile, quite proud of Lori for consenting. He knew how difficult it was to cope with a dunderhead like their brother, and considering his absence from Carrotus when fighting Devan Shell, she must have sustained a lot of punishment from Spaz's idiocy.

"Good to hear it. Let's head back to the path again. We still have a lot of ground to cover."

"All right," she uttered, scratching the back of her neck and turning to leave. Jazz followed suit.

"Hey! Hey guys!" Spaz shouted from behind, both of them wincing at the sound of his shrill voice. "Look!"

Turning around, they found Spaz's finger to be stretched outwards, and a tiny bluebird hovered down to land on it. Lori could not help but grin at the scene; it was too cute to resist. Jazz, on the other hand, turned quite pale, even through his fur.

The bird whistled once in a dulcet tone, hopping around on Spaz's finger.

"No! Get out of here!" he shouted towards the bird.

Another whistle sounded through the air, just as beautiful as last time. Spaz grinned widely, his tongue oozing out of his mouth. Lori glanced over at her elder brother in confusion.

"Shoo! Go away!" Jazz continued, his teeth grinding against each other lightly.

A third whistle of confusion came out as the bird turned in his direction, its eyes beholding the last bit of light it would see ever again. With one fell swoop, Spaz's flashed his wide mouth down on the unfortunate avian and, within the same second, swallowed it. Both of the other siblings winced as they heard the flapping wings against the wet walls of the red rabbit's esophagus, travelling ever downward into an early, sticky, and extremely acidic grave.

"Wha- . . . what was that . . . ?" Lori managed to peep out, feeling her stomach's desire to revolt at the scene.

"Exactly what it looked like," Jazz spoke, slowly regaining the colour of his face. "You're lucky that you've only seen this once."

"I'd rather not have seen it at all . . ." she complained with a sharp shudder induced by Spaz's licking his chops and belching out feathers.

The sound of a loud boom came out from the horizon, scaring the bluebirds that hovered overhead and causing them to flap wildly in the direction of the forest, screaming fearfully. The company looked towards the castle, noting the expanding black cloud of a burst firecracker. Everyone swallowed hard, as they knew this complicated things; the towns were now alerted of their escape.

"This isn't good," spoke Lori worriedly, her eyes locked on the monstrous cloud. "Do you still think it is safe to—"

"I'm plenty sure," Jazz replied swiftly, biting down on his lip with his buck teeth. "We need to keep going anyways. As fugitives, we can't be picky."

Lori glanced over to him worriedly, not sure if he had enough time to recuperate, but, whether he did or not, he appeared completely ready for a full sprint. Spaz appeared equally so, now perfectly sated with a bluebird in his belly.

"Let's go then," she uttered, blasting back to the path in blazing speed. Jazz followed suit, avoiding the majority of the billowing cloud of road dust.

"Eh? What?" shouted the remaining rabbit, confusion settling in. What are fugitives? What were they in a rush for again? What happened to the birdies? Why was he even thinking? It was all so baffling only a single thought managed to escape the miasma generated within his skull: the recognition that he was standing still. Surprised of himself of such immobility, he ran after his siblings with all the speed his rabbity body could muster, shouting after them, "WAIT FOR ME!"

The sun had set a while ago, ducking behind the enormous foliage of the distant Vegetable Labyrinth in the west. Gas lamps hanging off of truss structures on buildings were starting to light up in beautiful synchrony, illuminating the streets with light golden and soft orange hues as if to capture the last remnants of the set sun. Tall Victorian-style houses clung to the edges of the street as if they were afraid to part from it, and hardly a hare was out for a nocturnal stroll.

In a lone word, it was perfect. In the false light of the glowing orbs, Jazz would hardly be recognised by any set of eyes, even a guard's. In addition, Lori managed to convince Spaz after a long-winded harangue that he should keep his lip buttoned until she said he could, and that improved their chances of staying undetected enormously, or so she hoped.

She could not help but grow uneasy by being in the open, regardless. What-ifs flitted through her mind as she glanced to her left and right at the lit homes, fearing the possibility of discovery. The recognition from a well-informed person, one blurted idiocy from Spaz, a house-to-house search party—there were so many ways for them to be found out . . . and . . .

Her mind snapped back to reality when she felt the tap of a hand on her shoulder, and she shot a glance over her shoulder to find Jazz next to her, looking especially worried. She frowned, realising that she must have been making a face at that time.

"Don't worry, Lori. We're almost there," he spoke calmingly, pointing out the tallest building along the street even though all three were very familiar with the place.

Lori managed to form a smile and lowered her gaze, feeling her nerves dull slightly. The fear of being discovered took fewer roots in her, but was still there, looming like a shadow of an eclipse.

On the other side of her was Spaz, efforting to make his walk as ludicrously foolish as possible yet remaining eerily silent. A glare in his direction stopped his jig instantly, but as soon as she turned her head again it continued, redoubled into an awkward St. Vitus' Dance. The yellow rabbit rolled her eyes and sighed. It was impossible to quell Spaz's randomness for anything more than a few minutes before it releases again in renewed vigor. At least things couldn't get worse.

"Lori and fam! I _thought_ that was you!" shouted a voice from above, causing all three to flinch and look up. A grey hare had stuck his head and arm out of a second-story window of the building they were headed toward, waving amiably.

She felt her heart skip a beat, followed by the surging desire to knock the speaker into next Tuesday. As if it were not nearly enough to embarrass her, he was shouting it out for the world to hear, and was still continuing by the look of things.

"And what brings you to this neck of the woods, huh? Why, I was thinking about you guys just the other day, and—"

"Just shut up and open the door, Foozle!" she hissed quietly, noticing lights turning on inside a few houses. "Are you _trying_ to get us killed?"

The hare flicked his tongue over his lips nervously, withdrew his head and arm, and closed the window hastily behind him. Not soon afterward, the door unlocked from the other side and swung open to its fullest extent, revealing Foozle holding it open with one hand while offering them to come inside with his other.

The room was deceptively large, appearing to be considerably small but instead especially stuffed from the floor to the ceiling with books of every shape, size, and colour. Not even the castle library held as many volumes as what was held in this lone room, Lori thought in mild awe, the first to step through the portal.

As she passed by a considerable tower of books reaching up to her neck, she plucked the topmost tome off of it and glanced at the cover, assuming it to be some sort of scientific journal. Ironically, it was a cookbook, here in the house of what could be considered the worst chef in the history of, well, anywhere. Upon closer inspection of the title and the author, it wasn't especially ironic at all: "How to Successfully Gut and Serve a Roasted Infernos Fire Slug Three Million Different Ways with All the Trimmings and, Ooh! a Hint of Mayo!" by Rex Ringtail. Nothing could have repulsed her more, and she pushed the book away with all the might, sending it flying.

"That's how I reacted when I first saw it," Foozle commented with a snicker, adjusting his goggles in a habitual manner after he closed the door behind the three. "Old Zen has some odd tastes, dontcha' think?"

Jazz chuckled mildly while Spaz let out a wild hyena laugh. Lori managed to suppress her own, but allowed a small smile in Foozle's direction.

The cinerial-furred hare appeared to be just slightly younger than Lori, and was clothed from head to pad with the most unusual of fashions for a rabbit: an aviator jacket as well as a pair of loose-fitting trousers intentionally made for locking in heat. Tinted goggles overlapped a good portion of the front of his neatly combed hair, brushing it back and revealing his burgundy eyes. A leather aviator cap was strapped around the rear of his head, the buckles of which hung loosely onto his shoulders, and a pair of gloves fingered on his last three digits and thick at the palm covered the majority of his hands. Perhaps the most surprising article of clothing was his choice of footwear: a pair of thick, steel-toed leather boots that were far clunkier than anything else she had seen. There was no running in those clodhoppers, Lori noted.

"Speaking of Zen, do you know whether we could find him?" Jazz spoke up as he stepped forward. "We need his help for something big. . . ."

Foozle smiled at him at first before his expression changed to that of a frown.

"Unfortunately, ol' Zen isn't back from Hopteego Village just yet, but I'm sure I could whip something up for you until he does, including a few beds and a hot meal. You all look exhausted . . . well, not you, Red. You're as hyper as ever."

"Pipin' right!" Spaz exclaimed, beaming a smile that would Czar Clavid the Incredibly Vain look unhappy. Everyone stared at him like the day he grew a third eye, this time without one of Zen's horribly failing experimental drafts, before Jazz coughed into his hand.

"Well, that's an offer we'd be happy to take, Foo," he stated with a weak smile. "I—we—can't thank you enough for it."

"Fantastic! I'll get started on the meal at once!" the young hare exclaimed bubbly, placing his fist on his side unconsciously. "Please, make yourselves at home, but, uh, keep Red on a leash, all right?"

"Me? But what did I ever do to you?" Spaz shouted in confusion, looking up from a gnawed-on old tome.

"WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?" Foo screeched in horror, clopping over quickly and grabbing hold of the book as Spaz continued his quest of eating the unfortunate literary artefact. Spaz didn't let go of it without a fight, keeping his viselike teeth embedded on its leather cover, but with one final tug the hardcover popped out of his mouth . . . well, the majority of it. "My precious _Methods of Mechanics_ . . . torn to shreds!" the unfortunate hare sobbed, holding the remnants close to him as he fell to his knees.

"Rahm ram mri rah mra! mra! mra! Ptooie!" Spaz uttered, his mouth full of paper, leather, and saliva before ejecting it in a thick wad of nobody-wants-to-know-what. Lori, on the other hand, caught sight of feathers and a partially digested bone and recoiled from the disgusting clump with a look of absolute disgust. Finally able to breath, Spaz let out a happy, loud sigh before glancing down. "Um, gee . . . !" Spaz uttered rather vociferously down to the grey bunny before picking up the paperball up again. "Sorry about that, but I was hungry and it smelled tasty and—"

"But I was just going to cook you something . . . I even told you that! Why did you have to eat my favourite book?" Foo continued ruefully.

"Oh, you said that? Sorry, but I didn't notice!" the mangy rabbit squealed with an afterwards nervous chuckle before getting grabbed by the scruff and lifted off of the ground.

Flailing his arms and legs in swimming motion, he made an effort to use his new and exciting power of flight, but to his surprise nothing happened. A sudden jerk turned around, and he came face to face with a furious sibling.

Lori stared him straight in the eye, and he did the same for several seconds before his tongue rolled out the corner of his mouth like a party blower would.

"Hey, Sis!" he shouted merrily as if nothing bad had occurred previously. "Look what I found!"

With that, Spaz raised the paper wad up into Lori's face with a loud squish, causing a lot of slimy fluid to ooze out into her soft fur. Needless to say, she threw him away and fell backwards screaming.

"Sometimes I wonder why we don't get a muzzle for him," Jazz sighed while shaking his head. "Listen, I can make it up to you, Foo, and set up the beds. Lori, could you find a nice, mostly empty room and lock Spaz in there? Probably toss a marble in as well for him to choke on?"

"I wish we had either of the two," sniffled Foozle while he rubbed his running nose.

"Well, it was worth a try, but the book would fill him up, at least . . . that is, if you were willing to part with the rest of it?"

"The rest of it?" Foo cried out, glancing down onto the remaining tatters of his tome and pursing his lips bitterly. With another snuffle, he held it out to the red rabbit. "Here, take it. . . . Not much good from a book torn in half . . . but don't eat anything else in here, got it?"

Spaz nodded like his namesake and looked the leftover tome like a half-eaten sandwich before chomping on it like such. Jazz cringed, Foozle sobbed, Lori scrubbed her face off with a wet cloth, and Spaz ate in ecstasy.

_This is going to be a long night_, Lori thought to herself, and she silently hoped to herself that she wouldn't spend the night with that loathsome brother of hers. Little did she know that she was doomed to do so by the Universal Law of Unorthodox Events Triggered by Unlucky Rabbit Feet. Bafflingly, Jazz had two unlucky rabbit feet, Lori one, and Spaz absolutely none. Don't ask.

"So what exactly did you come here for?" Foozle spoke after swallowing a mouthful of carameled carrots and creamed potatoes. "It must be something important for you to come here, of all places."

Lori glanced across the table's meager meal over to her green brother, questioning who it was directed toward. Jazz returned the look with a shrug and finished swallowing a piece of quiche.

"Well, that's the question of the hour right there," he responded. "Surely you've heard the news from the castle?"

"Nah, I don't get out much," Foo replied, sticking a two-pronged fork into ten additional carameled carrot chunks and placing them on his plate. "What I do know, though, is that the fireworks have stopped, but that is hardly surprising, huh?"

"Firewor—but that was a month ago!" Lori exclaimed, to which Foozle smiled and nodded.

"I told you that I didn't get out much," he stated, carving a chunk up and placing a piece in his mouth.

"It's no wonder you didn't get the invitation . . ." Jazz sighed before he shrugged it off. "Long story short, Devan is back, and we need Zen's help in taking back a gem that's really important of mine and upgrade our guns. I think we are in need of a touch-up."

Foozle raised an eyebrow and took the goggles off of his forehead, glancing down at them as he always did when he thought deeply on something.

"So that ugly turtle has come out of his grave, has he? I thought you took care of him months ago, Jazz, but that's no problemo." He grinned and twirled his goggles around by the strap, around and around and around. "Tell you what: while ol' Zen is out and about, I'll work on this for you, and you'll get that reptilian twit down in the dirt where he belongs."

"You? Are you sure you are up to the job? It's quite a lot to ask from one rabbit," Lori spoke worriedly.

"Pah! Nonsense! Zenny told me all about being a gunsmith, and I've many flighty inventions of my own. Just leave it to me."

"Whoa now, Foo, are you saying that you can get everything done in time and _without_ blowing up?" Jazz questioned, setting down his fork and knife to stare at the young inventor.

"But of course!" the hare bubbled, snatching his goggles mid-twirl and smiling cheerily. "I think I've improved, and I'll finish everything before sunrise—you have my word on that!"

"Much obliged," Jazz responded with a pleased smile, looking over to his sister before he noticed the empty seat where his oafish brother was sitting. "Um, do either of you know where Spaz went?"

Neither had to respond, having been interrupted by a number of rumbles beneath them followed by a loud, tinny explosion. China rattled, tableware and food flew everywhere, and everyone rose to their feet fast enough before the table, in its entirety, fell through the floor and landed less than safely on the basement floor below. All three leporine diners gaped at the mess before a squeaky, nervous laugh came from the darkness below, followed by a very loud "whomp."

"Sorry all, but I was playing catch with this bouncy thing! It's very fun, but I think it blew something up! I wonder where this ball came from! Oh, wait, it's a pill!"

_We all wonder that . . ._ Lori completed wordlessly, striking her forehead soundly. Foozle sweated around the lips, like any hare would do in his position, and Jazz groaned before walking toward the door.

"I'll pay for the renovations, Foo . . ." he heaved with a sigh. "Thanks for the meal and everything else . . . but now I've a brother to cuff alongside the head."


	5. Chapter 5:  Ha! When Rabbits Fly!

_**The Diamond of Two Destinies: Chapter 5**_

The morning could not have come soon enough for the two older Jackrabbit siblings. Between the loud roars and crackles of Foozle's exploits downstairs and Spaz's unending insomnia, the two managed to dissolve their night into shifts, one keeping watch by the door of the bedroom they locked the red rabbit in and the other napping in a nearby room.

Lori took the first shift, kindly shooing Jazz off to bed at the first moment she was able to find, and when before the hour had struck for Jazz's turn she pounded on the door and demanded an early reprieve. The elder brother could hardly blame her. Spaz was difficult to deal with for very long, as he somehow found ways out of the room and blew the living daylights out of Foozle's unfortunate machines, and the chemistry between those two was much like an overflowing dam: the more Spaz pushed, the worse Lori was for wear.

When dawn broke, both seemed wooden and wrenched of all rest, Jazz especially, yet Spaz appeared to be as bubbly and perky as the birds he loved to eat so much. How someone who had not slept at all for the past five years could pull that off, they had no idea, but they resented it greatly; his insomnia spread the curse of a night with little respite for the both of them.

"Goo-oo-ood morning, everyone!" Foozle piped as he dismounted the top steps of the stairwell, feeling not the least grouchy from having his machines mercilessly sabotaged by Spaz's antics when he managed to escape his room or from the fact that science took sleep's place. "I hope you had a good night's sleep and—er . . . oh." He droned off as he met the mutual glare in both pairs of Jackrabbit eyes. Spaz simply gurgled on the other side of his locked door, following up with crescendo belches, but everybody ignored him. "Rough night, huh?"

"You could say that . . ." the green rabbit groaned.

"Uh-huh," Foozle said with a genial smile. "Well, that's A-Okay; you'll have plenty of time to sleep on my latest flying gizmo. It is just a skeletal model, yes sir, but it will work."

"Whoa, whoa, what do you mean 'flying gizmo'? You're saying that you had enough time to make one, and you're positive it would work?" Lori inquired with a narrowing of her eyes and a tilt of her brow.

"Pfft, I've been working on my plane for a couple of days now. Besides, not all of my gadgets go wrong," Foo grumbled defensively. "Only fifteen of the ones I finished had minor errors in them."

"Yeah? Out of how many?"

"Um, let's see, carry the two, add that one and divide by the square root of seven . . ." the grey rabbit mumbled under his breath before his eyes lit up in accomplishment, "five hundred and twenty eight, and something left over! I'll have to find that bit out later."

"Good grief, you've made that many whatchamacallits?" Jazz inquired in surprise, trying to make sense of the numbers.

"Huh? Oh, sorry, I was thinking about this code I was close to cracking. What was the question again? Oh, right . . . fifteen, I think?"

"Fif—" Jazz started off before slapping his forehead. Lori rolled her eyes, and Spaz blared what sounded like the mating call of an air horn. "Uveeeeeeeee," "uveeeeeeeeen," and "uveeeeeeeeez" said the red leporine fellow behind the locked door, none of which even closely in lieu of the "bwaaaaaaaaah" except for the wonderfully pointy exclamation marks at the ends.

"Right . . . okay then," Foo managed to say when Spaz ran out of breath and decided to impale himself against a wall. "Listen, this baby will fly you guys there in one piece. I checked the engines, the wings, the propeller, and the tire pressure, and that's all it needs checking for! What do you say about that, hmm?"

"Well, you seem pretty smug about this . . ." the lemon-hued leporine observed with a sigh, "and it sure would beat walking."

"Then it's settled!" Foo exclaimed with a beaming smile. "Next stop, Vegetable Labyrinth! Oh, and I've made you all some breakfast in case you are—"

Spaz barreled into the hall with his supercritter speed at the very mention of food, leaving a detailed imprint, twisting tongue included, where he tore through the door, and when he embedded himself into the opposing wall for added measure. Jazz groaned and shook his head.

"Foo, don't worry. I'll—"

"Pay for the damages, yada yada, blah blah, I know it all too well . . ." sighed the hare. "It's a good thing you're married to the princess, or you'd be in serious debt."

"Yeah, I know," Jazz answered, laughing immediately afterward to cover his embarrassment. It was fact that (a) he _wasn't_ married and (b) he _was_ already in debt, but Foozle didn't have to figure it out.

Luckily for him, Foozle was not the best in terms of insight. In fact, he was the third worst, beaten on the wrong side of the spectrum by a slug Paulina and also trumped by the onion king Herr Yaeger, but their stories are hardly important.

Unluckily for him, Spaz opened his fat mouth.

"But Bro," he shouted, craning his neck to pit to pitch his squeaky voice even louder, "I thought you didn't get—!"

Lori got behind him in the nick of time, pinning her hand over his gargantuan mouth and her arm around his chest so tightly that everything came out muddled and unintelligible. He kicked hard in every direction imaginable, but Lori made sure she didn't let go until he stopped to pant through her fingers.

"Right . . . well, food's ready when you want it," the hare spoke as he turned and headed back down the stairs.

_I do wish he hadn't mentioned food again . . . _thought Jazz with a grimace, Spaz flailing every one of his limbs in the background now and pinning Lori underneath him as they fell in tandem.

"Don't just stand there lollygagging, Jazz! Help me!" she screeched at the top of her lungs.

Too tired to argue with merely a few hours of sleep under his belt, he did just that and aided the whirling red bundle of fur off.

Old Zen had been the only smith in the regency for decades, and as such he had lived a life of plenty far longer than most people could. He owned a swell house, acquired a swell piece of land, and led a swell life, but when he extended the borders of his skills to not nearly as swell eccentricity it won him both fame and infamy. A straight road of mortared stone enough to pave all the streets of the town was laid out in the vacancy behind his manor like a runway, and was a major source of his mixed popularity, but only second in comparison to his reputation as a self-acclaimed master chef. Cooking was not what this road to nowhere was for, however, as much as his love for flight.

"So let me get this straight," Lori voiced as she pointed ahead and gave a sharp look at Foozle, "you want us to crawl onto this _thing_, go in this cabin without windows or lights or even _safety harnesses_, get some sleep, and trust that you have everything under control?"

Foozle's gadget, located a little ways away from the house and on the very centre of the road to nowhere, was a skeletal model, and a small one at that. The frame of the entire craft was naked, unladen by any protection excepting the critical aspects for flight, a shielded cockpit, the cabin that she had specified, and a narrow sky bridge drawn between the two. The cabin was small, boxy, and appeared otherwise fragile, attached to the hull so roughly that it seemed a good push could cause it to slide off. Two wings, each pinned to the main body by quaternary rivets, jutted out lifelessly like a dead crow's pair. A gigantic pinwheel head was attached to a spindly nose like a propeller, and to top it off the two pairs of wheels, unparalleled to each other, sat underneath the thing, appearing ready to explode under the load at any moment.

"Nope! I've drilled some holes in the walls for some elastic waist straps, so you should be fine," the hare grinned, strapping his goggles on and pulling his ears underneath his flight cap with his tongue in his cheek. "Not that bad-looking for four days of working from scratch, huh?"

Both Jazz and Lori gawked.

"Are you insane?" Lori pitched, her tongue finding words of its own.

Foo gave her a odd look and responded, " 'Do I have a mane?' Preposterous! What do you think I am, a snarling lion?"

Rolling his eyes, he readjusted his headgear so his ears delved deeper underneath the cap and headed toward the cockpit. The yellow rabbit whirled toward her sibling.

"Please tell me you don't trust this guy, 'cause I sure can't!" she fumed.

"I can't tell, to be honest," Jazz replied with a shrug. "His history makes me queasy, but Old Zenny has a worse one."

"Worse? How can one have a worse history than fifteen failed inventions out of fifteen?"

"By having a larger similar proportion?"

"Good point," Lori stated before the two lapsed into silence. The numerous engines of the craft started to sputter to life, and in the far back they could hear fitful squeals and slams into a thick metallic surface that could only be their vermillion-hued sibling. "So, did you make a decision?"

"What decision?"

"The one on whether you could trust him or not?" she grumbled, each second of lost sleep revealing itself in her voice.

"Oh, that . . ." Jazz laughed. "No, I don't trust him, but we should go anyway."

"Really? And how did you come up with that logic?"

He shrugged and pointed at a flaring rear engine, replying nonchalantly: "Because if we don't, Foo's going to take off with our brother in tow."

"Ah . . ." she responded, and a second later both burst into action, rushing toward the sad excuse of a plane as it headed down the runway.

Of course, it was hardly a feat for anyone with supercritter speed to climb aboard a still-moving vehicle, and the two had more than enough objects to pull themselves up before the machine started to fly. It should never have achieved such a thing, but it flew all the same.

"Hey, what gives?" she shouted toward the pilot seconds after she started taking deep breaths, gripping a railing of the sky bridge in one hand and shielding her face from the harsh winds with the other. The words were lost from the ambient air, and even if it did there was Foozle's temporary hearing loss to hinder it, but Foozle turned his head around, said something again lost in the wind and pointed behind them simultaneously, and focused ahead to tilt the nose of the plane ever higher.

"We need to get to the cabin!" Jazz shouted at a little distance behind her, hardly audible but still able to be registered. She could feel him moving to the back of the craft through the balustrade, and, fending off her anger at Foozle for the unwarned lift-off, turned to do the same. It was easier than easy, forced by both gravity and air resistance ever backward, and when Jazz pulled the door open both they practically fell in, but not before he latched it shut again with a snap.

Lori collapsed on something mangy and capable of coughing out "Oof!" and was quite pleased to know that it was Spaz that she had landed on. Such giddy revenge was short-lived, however, when the final rabbit landed on _her _this time.

"Oof!" both she and Spaz groaned in unison.

"Sorry . . ." was the eldest brother's response as he flopped off to the left, and Lori followed suit in the other direction.

"Jeez, here I was picking gunk out of my ears and you guys fall in! Can this day get any better or what?" Spaz shouted gleefully, a whinny-like laugh following shortly after.

The others would have either laughed along with him or rolled their eyes at this, had they not realised that his hands were directly behind their heads. His sticky hands. . . . Instead, they shouted their discontent at the top of their lungs.

The other hours of the trip passed smoothly, too smoothly for Spaz's liking. He wanted to do something much more fun than staying in his corner and keeping out of his siblings' hair, but nothing offered itself other than the birdsong that taunted him outside—it was really the engines—and the all-too-frequent wish to run in circles until his boots worn out so he'd complain to someone and get another pair. But thinking of fun things to do was boring, or at least until he figured out that he was thinking, and then that he was thinking about thinking, and then he did the most sensible thing he could think of: he panicked. One fun fact about Spaz is that you would never know when he was going to instantly forget about where he was and jump hastily out of a window, or whether he would forget everything altogether. With no windows readily available, he did the latter.

Things went along that route for the majority of the trip: finding that he was in someplace dark and metallic, starting to his feet only to run into a similarly dark and metallic wall, thinking, thinking about thinking, forgetting again.

And then the mother of all birdies showed up to break up the vicious cycle. A loud screech very similar to an engine's blowing up but _definitely_ a bird call ripped through the air, and the entire room started to lurch slightly from horizontal to not, which was _definitely_ a sign that a weighty bird landed somewhere close. In reality, of course, it was just an explosion followed by the ship's taking a dive, but try explaining that to Spaz and the only thing you would achieve is a swollen tongue and a massive headache from hearing yourself explain.

Spaz was flushed with excitement, not that his colour had changed much, or at all, in the dark, and daydreamed of catching and devouring the entire illusionary bird in one gulp. His siblings, however, were not the least excited, and screamed their surprise into the air.

"Quiet, guys! Don't scare her off!" Spaz shouted, feeling the wall for some way out to catch the enormous avian.

"What the heck are you talking about?" Lori shouted on what must have been the other side of the metal contraption.

He wasn't able to get a word in before a burst of wind and an incredible brightness very close to him revealed themselves. He squinted before letting out a squeal of joy, identifying a familiar figure stepping through the door near him and taking off his aviator cap.

"What in the world was that noise?" Jazz asked from behind Spaz, his voice sounding of a groggy rhino with pure adrenaline administered.

Spaz, of course, knew exactly how this guttural noise sounded when he pressed down on a griddled lung of the prized sleepy rhinoceros one festive castle night. The chef got a little too imaginative with his Rex Ringtail cookbooks that night and was sacked (and imprisoned) immediately after Blind Herschel, the Queen's advisor, accidently sank his teeth into a lump of ambergris and choked to death. That is all in the past, but is really nifty to think about, if you fancy deathly cookery.

"Oh, that. There is absolutely nothing to worry about," Foozle responded calmly, a smile illuminated in the clash of darkness and light, "nothing at all, except that we are about to land very briskly."

"How briskly?" the green rabbit continued with a raise of his eyebrow.

"Depends on whether I make it to the controls in time" was his reply, and with that he thrust them all into the dark once more.

Lori fulminated, Jazz stayed silent, Spaz pondered over whether pumpkin pie would go well with day-old vomit, and all steeled themselves to the best of their ability for the ride of their lives.

"Oh yeah! This'll be a piece of chocolate cake!" the grey hare voiced to himself optimistically, plopping himself into the cockpit expertly after a good climb down the bridge and pulled up on the yoke of the aircraft. It was a good thing that he did, if you fancied staying in one piece and perfectly alive, that is. The crow wings flew them safely out of the way of a freak boulder on the plains, but not in the clear from the freak tree heading right for the—

WHOP! Off flew the landing gear as it clipped the top of the tree.

"No sweat; I never liked that design anyways," the pilot confessed. "Besides, it would make for a better landing if this baby's body was used instead."

He continued flying the craft lower and lower to the ground, a tough job to do without an engine and still going a bazillion kilometres per hour. Two larger trees came into his view, and he hardly had enough time to react before—

PING—CLANG! The wings tore from the main body like rabid dogs from a skunk carcass when beaten with a beef tenderloin, only against the great trunks. Without anything to hold it aloft, the skeletal plane dug into the ground furiously. It threatened to flip tail-over-nose, but it somehow didn't. _It must be the ratio of length to width_, Foo thought, but really he had no clue.

As the craft ground into whatever soil it managed to snag and slowed in turn, the pilot let go of the now-useless yoke and shouted prematurely at the top of his merry little lungs, "Another perfect landing made by Foozleworth Avogadro Fiddlesteen the Sixth!" Of course, the universe never liked a braggart in the history of its existence, let alone a untimely one, and thus decided to muck things up a bit by having the ship run into a giant crisphead.

Did I say giant? I meant so colossally, gihumongicly big that it could feed a billion and one people on its splendiferous foliage, and that's subtracting the core since _nobody_ likes to eat that junk (except the Chinese, but only the scholars knew about that long-forgotten place; sorry, China). Such a marvel, a landmark among landmarks, was spoiled by having the aircraft plow nose-first and bury its head in the leaves like an ostrich.

Foozle, eyes closed, gagged on the smell of plant matter mixed with noxious fumes from the obliterated propeller, and attempted a peek above the few flight controls, only to find that it was pitch dark. Surprised, he blinked a few times, ran his hands against the water-logged wall above him, and tested a whiff of the air again.

"Ugh, lettuce. . . . Out of all the things in the world, I had to run into lettuce," he groaned, rubbing his chest where the dashboard had struck him and finding that, other than a little pain, he was quite fine. "No serious injuries, though, which is a good thing. All right, let's get to digging!"

Though Foo was indeed a gizmo freak and an undersized hare to boot, he was considerably strong. Working on enormous inventions requiring a lot of metal assured that his muscles would see a lot of use, and when his antediluvian burrowing instincts came to him across the scape of Time no amount of iceberg lettuce could stop him. His hands shoveled the nutrient-deprived leaves behind him in a blur, and in a little over a minute he clambered out into open air again.

"Freedom!" he gasped, more than glad to breathe without worrying about the lack of oxygen around him.

It was then that he saw his three passengers in front of him, each of which—except Red, he noted, who was now attempting to catch whatever dandelion seeds flitted by in his mouth—giving him a glare.

"What," he spoke defensively, "I thought it was a beautiful escape."

"We thought you said this machine of yours wouldn't fail!" shouted Lori.

"Then you would be correct. It didn't fail. This baby got you here in one piece, yeah?"

"Barely . . ." Jazz answered, a groan erupting from him as he rubbed his left leg. "Those 'waist straps' you made wouldn't even keep a ball on a paddle, let alone us. Next time, equip regular safety harnesses, all right?"

"If there's even going to _be_ a next time!" Lori completed, stepping up to Foo and gripping him by the front of his shirt with one hand, a deft feat for someone as small as she. "Listen, shrimpo, you'd better shape up your design next time before you offer us a ride like that, got it?"

"H-hey, I modified those guns of yours and threw in a free ride! Isn't that enough for _some_ respect? Letta go of me!" spat out Foozle, struggling to break out of her grip.

Lori held check a frown and let go with a flick of her wrist, having him drop limply and regain his poise.

"Now that's more like it. Anyway, it was just a freak of nature that the engine exploded—"

"More like your lack-lustre reputation," Lori corrected intermittently.

"—and now my plane is billowing lots of smoke," Foo continued with a mild glare at her. "You'd better make yourself scarce before whoever that's looking for you takes note of it."

"Gladly," Jazz responded, looking into the edge forest that towered over them and stepping the first steps around the ruined head of lettuce. "C'mon, guys, let's go find that diamond."

Lori followed him closely, glancing over to Foo in a distrusting manner before diverting her attention over to the oafish sibling with a wad of dandelion seeds in his mouth. Foo heaved a low sigh as he watched her leave, wishing that she could trust him at least once in her life like he trusted her long ago when they were kids, but he knew it was not going to be so . . . yet. _Just keep your head up, Foo,_ he thought to himself, _and someday she'll recognise you. Invent something spectacular and everyone will look up to you, just like Master Zen did._

"Oh, one more thing, Jazz. Well . . . two, actually," he shouted right before the green rabbit was about to step beyond the head of lettuce, scratching underneath his cap nervously.

"What is it?" the other responded.

"First, make sure everyone comes back in one piece, yeah? I'd hate to hear it if somebody gets roasted by that Devan."

"I'll try. Much obliged, Foo, but what was the other thing?"

"Just something that Ol' Zen might say, I guess. Bury that turtle, and make sure he stays in his grave or we might have a bigger crisis on our hands than planetary battleships."

Foozle noticed a faint shadow pass over the Jackrabbit's face before he nodded.

"I will," Jazz stated simply, and with that he stepped out of view, leaving Foozle alone atop his shredded invention.

"It's a snorting shame my invention didn't make it, but I should have expected otherwise. 'Always expect the unexpected,' they say? Pah! it should be 'Always expect the expected'," he mumbled, hopping down onto the ground and landing safely nearby. "Now I have to walk home, evade roads, dodge traffic, _and_ make it home before Zen dies of a heart attack. Yeah, this ought to be fun, but it could always be worse. C'est la vie."

With a smile, he plodded back toward the distant town, though more than frequently he gazed back at the Labyrinth. _They'd be fine,_ he told himself optimistically each time, but even then he had his doubts.


	6. Chapter 6: Cold Meets Warm Blood

**Author's Note: Well, it took a while, but the newest chapter is here for you all to see. I had a lot of fun writing this, so hopefully you will have an equal amount of mirth reading it as well. Please be sure to leave a review, as reviews equals smiley faces on a Thanny's fizzog. No reviews means no smiley face, and that means a frumpy face on a Thanny's fizzog. Please, think of the Thanny's. It means so much to them.**

**Disclaimer: I own Jazz Jackrabbit entirely, mind, body, soul, and game. Well, actually, no; that's partially a lie. Okay, entirely a lie.**

* * *

_**The Diamond of Two Destinies Chapter 6: Cold Meets Warm Blood**_

When it came to delving through underbrush like a charging rhinoceros, Spaz was the best thing his two legal guardians could have brought along. The jittery rabbit rushed along his bushwhacked path without a care in the world, satiating the Universal Law of Unorthodox Events Triggered by Unlucky Rabbit Feet enough so that the company had little to worry about. Again, the narrator implores you not to ask; UnLUnETURF has axioms that took more than three centuries for the wisest of vertebrates to ponder over without having their minds unhinged, and is still vastly unaccepted in the world of physics at this time.

The Vegetable Labyrinth was a natural maze like no other. Pumpkins and grape vines intertwined with other vegetation to form impassable walls. More often than not, the siblings were forced to scamper around obstacles rather than shoot them down, plasma shots greedily absorbed by or bouncing off of the thick foliage instead of cutting through.

Unlike the risks posed by a normal labyrinth such as getting lost or eaten by a two-legged bovine, the only dangers were the bramble growths inhabiting the lower pockets of land and the inhabitants. The thorns which accompanied them were long enough to skewer a victim, sustaining the plants with fresh blood for many years to come. If one were more observant yet improperly armed, on the other hand, the natives might prove a more difficult problem.

By the end to the Third Aesopian War several hundred years ago, the indigenous lizards were the only reptiles allowed to live on Carrotus, whilst all others were removed through the option of mass exodus or the option of mass grave. Nonviolent and herbivorous, the lizards were tolerated as harmless individuals who merely sought a place to stay and given the forests and Labyrinth to live in.

Several generations had passed since those bloody days, as had the lizard's passivity when turtles besought their aid in the fourth and latest Aesopian War. The promise of wealth, land, and freedom to roam wherever they wished twisted a majority of lizards into Devan's scheme, fueling his war effort, but their opposition against the rabbits was short-lived at best. Smaller in number and armed with less advanced weapons or none at all, hundreds of lizards perished for every loss the rabbits sustained. The forests were retaken, the lizards routed to the Labyrinth, and the war ended with the demise of Devan, or so everyone thought.

History aside, only the harmless parrots (and a small flock of completely harmful parrots loosed by the Rabbit Environmental Agency of Lowbrow Lunatical Yahoos, or REALLY for short) and lizards were known to inhabit the otherwise dangerous lands. Only the bravest or stupidest of rabbits dared to venture into the underbrush, and that is precisely what the three were—brave and stupid.

Against all odds, Spaz halted at the brinks of every loganberry and dewberry patch the troupe was about to run into, distracted by some flitting bird or massive leaf or puny alien spacecraft taking puny alien pictures instead of the sharp, recurved dangers below. They crossed eventually, whether it was through leaping overhead or landing on the head of an unsuspecting, suspended pumpkin.

"How much further do we have to go, I wonder?" puffed Jazz, fighting back the fatigue in his aching limbs as he and Lori ran close together through the underbrush. Their flailing idiot of a brother paved the way, kicking everything in his path and landing on his face at least a dozen times. That could have posed a problem, had his molecular brain not been nestled in a skull denser than rhino bone.

"Beats me," stated Lori, shrugging her shoulders mid-run. "From what I've seen, the Labyrinth is larger than some of the forests out there, but if you want to get technical some idiot scientists measured the perimeter to be a little more than three hundred Spratulforus hops. Assuming it is a circle, that's, uh"—the lemon-coloured rabbit paused to do some mental arithmetic—"seven thousand square Sprats, give or take a few hundred."

"Quite the math smarts you've got there, Sis," Jazz uttered with a grin.

Her cheeks flushed minutely before she spat back at him, "Oh, stuff it!"

Jazz chuckled to himself over Lori's overprotectiveness of her math smarts. She always had a sharp mind, but for some reason she despised revealing it to anyone, especially him. Though he tried to drag it out of her for as long as he could remember, it was that same response all the time: "Oh, stuff it!"

Now, the Spratulforus hop, or Sprat for short, had been relatively new to the field of measurements, created by none other than Spratulforus the Sprightful Hare himself fifty years ago. Inventor, teacher, philosopher—he dabbled in every art he could lay his hands on and succeeded in becoming the most famous lagomorph in all of Carrotus. He did not stop there, however. He craved ever more. Once the Rabolympics started, he swore that he would best every record made by far. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for others, that did not happen. At the first event, Spratulforus stepped up with a short-burst rocket on his back and blew the record of twelve paces away, not to mention himself. Since he was so well-known yet had nothing purposeful named after him yet, they used the distance he leapt—a staggering 1760 paces—for field measurements. It was a smash hit, being much easier to use than a stride's length, but poor Sprat's story was solely epitaphed on a wooden sign:

"_Here lies Spratulforus. He jumped pretty far before exploding in a prettier ball of flame. Oh, an actual visitor! Hello, visitor!_

—_Sign__ Jr.__"_

"HEY GUYS, I THINK WE'RE ALMOST THERE!" screamed Spaz over the distance at the top of his itty-bitty lungs before he twirled like a ceiling fan and pulled off a septuple axel. He kept running, surprisingly enough, his legs spinning in blurry circles like the legendary speedy hedgehog that currently resided only in the oldest of story books.

"You said that—what?—eleven times already!" Lori spat back, throwing a suspicious glance ahead of her. "What makes you think we'll believe you now, of all times? Where is 'there', anyways?"

"Here we go again," Jazz groaned into his palm before the resounding thud of a body against something far more solid than radish or carrot met his ears. A silly grin crossed his face as he and his sister came to a halt. "Well, whaddya know," he continued, "I guess he found it."

Over the mowed-down clearing of lemongrass, past the number of mulched pumpkin vines, and clean through a patch of overgrown bok choi, the two could see a tall staked palisade with their idiot brother wedged into it, fitting almost seamlessly between a pair of timbers. Spaz waved at the two, seemingly unfazed by the ordeal of collapsing a tree-sized stake or the fact that he was stuck with his feet dangling, and Jazz, uncertain of what else to do, waved back.

"What do you think that's for . . . ?" queried Lori, her hand instinctively reaching toward the gun at her waist. Had there not been massive amounts of vegetation around, the monstrous wall of hacked forest pines would have towered over the landscape like a woodland in its own right.

Grating shrieks of terror, anger, disgust, and who knows what else arose from the other side, growing in volume like the hum of a kicked hornet's nest and answering her question. Whatever Spaz had done was clearly not the best of actions.

"Whatever it is, it'll have to wait!" Jazz shouted as he burst forward to grab their glassy-eyed, still-waving brother.

He was a little more than a second too late. As he reached out, the red rabbit was yanked beyond the wall by four scaly hands, the results of which were a cartoony pop from the momentary squeeze and a kicking mess of fur and fury. Through the hole, Jazz could witness the tussle, Spaz giving his best effort to fend off several lizards that attempted to silence him. His loud and squeaky protests went on, regardless.

A swift, passing breeze signified that something flew over Jazz's head, and he knew exactly what it was. Lori catapulted herself through the narrow hole with a diving somersault, weapon drawn and eyes closed. _Ever the acrobat,_ the green-haired one chuckled inwardly as he watched her fly, and followed her in with his Flit gun two-handedly toted.

Both weapons were trained on the lizards surrounding Spaz immediately, the kicks of whom were flying at a slower rate as exhaustion kicked in. Spaz's assailants greedily seized their chance, but not without a good sock in the face or two in return.

"Let the idiot go," spoke Lori over the din, onyx gaze locked fearlessly ahead.

Jazz noted that a reptile of the group sporting a headdress slipped a bone knife out of a crude armband, but with luck the tip was pointed at them and not Spaz. Ironically enough, that made things simpler should the matter turn into a hostage situation or something more hostile, and the two could potentially overtake the lizards before anything could happen to him, but that was not the only concern. Jazz noticed a small horde of other lizards circling them and keeping their distance. The very air tensed with blood lust, anger, and fear.

The bladed individual stepped up, fondling the knobby weapon with eyes gazing into Lori's. "And why should we do that?" he queried with a cynical simper.

Something unctuous and nauseating lay within the lizard's tone that reminded Jazz of grubs worming their way out of earth. Were all lizards like this, relying on subtlety and brooding over their loss in the last war, or were the two he had the displeasure to speak with the only ones? _Too early to say__,_ he chastised himself inwardly.

"Because half a litre of liquid flame is aimed at your head right now, clever-clogs," Lori countered. "Now back away or I will torch you and anyone else who refuses."

Some in the nearing crowd ceased their approach, and more than a few took a few steps back. Jazz saw the dread of death pass over their faces as he glanced around, but not the one ahead.

The oily reptile waved his weapon toward the crimson rabbit. Spaz certainly was a fighter, Jazz reminded himself, but was nearing the final throes of his wrestling, and a hand was already laid on his throat. The green rabbit tensed his legs in wait for some sort of opening or signal.

"Now, that would be _very_ disadvantageous for us lizardfolk. What's stopping you, bun-bun, from blasting us all once you get your fellow back?"

riposted Lori, flicking the safety switch off with the sweep of a hand. "The choice is yours, hombre. Stand down now."

The lizard withdrew the smile and licked his lips, pondering the situation. Jazz pondered as well. Even if they got Spaz out of his predicament, he would be too tired to fight so many off, and, while he and Lori would have little problem by themselves, protecting someone would immensely complicated things. Looking over to Lori was no consolation. Though she hid her inner mechanisms well, he could tell as a brother that she too had no solid strategy.

"How 'bout something fairer? You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." the lizard uttered. Jazz did not like the sound of this, and evidently his lemon-hued sibling did not either.

"I'm listening . . . but this had better be a fair trade."

"It's fair, rabbit, and simple enough. You stay here and fix what was broken, and we will watch and study you to ensure that you are not as harebrained as he is." The oily lizard pointed toward Spaz with his knife. "If you complete the task within a day's time, you get your comrade back and we will think of your kind as . . . less hostile." A grin formed. "How about that deal? I guarantee you'll find none better."

Little did Jazz and Lori know that this sounded like a car salesman's pitch on the machine world Smoggius, complete with a hook, an outrageous task, and a sly demeanour that would make small children cry. That reminds the narrator of an advertisement. Ahem.

**Is your rickshaw or other inferior mode of transportation breaking down? Then come down to Smoggius, the greatest technological font in the UNIVERSE! Here you will find only the best of goods, like this light bulb. Huh? HUH? Pretty cool, right? See how it glows through the grey glass a bit? Or this steam-powered automobile that takes SEVEN tonnes of coal to move TEN kilometres. That's FOUR times the byproduct discharge of a recycling plant, all for you to use! We promise you that the HEAVENS will change colour when you drive in this, and not only your NEIGHBORS! So stop by Wingnut Al's Car Emporium while you can and spend more than your life's savings here. There NEVER is more useful junk than MY junk****.**

"That's a terrible deal!" Jazz shouted, breaking his silence and his sweat for the first time since the conversation started. All focused on him, including his sister which plunged her gaze into him like a scarab. She must have (a) been seriously considering the offer or (b) not heard the Wingnut Al ad like he did, or worst of all (c) been seriously considering the Wingnut Al offer.

"My deals aren't terrible, whelp," huffed the lizard, his cool and collected attitude eroding.

Jazz ignored him for the time being and turned toward his sister, saying, "Lor, can I speak to you privately for a moment?"

Lori frowned minutely and looked toward the ruffled lizard, who merely shrugged his shoulders and renewed his grin; no doubt he felt in control again and was pleased with it. She turned about enough to keep him in the corner of her view, but only gave him that tiny amount of trust.

"What is this about?" she whispered in hasty confusion. "The deal wasn't that bad, was it?"

"Think about it, Sis. Did you see any giant trees along the entire Labyrinth?"

"Well, no, but—"

"And did you see how large those trunks are? The two of us couldn't pick one up, let alone hack them down at the base. He's playing us for saps!"

"If it's any help," the blade-holding lizard uttered, nonchalantly entering the conversation, "there's some rope and replacement logs over there."

Jazz ground his teeth together, barely resisting the thought of firing a shot right between that snake of a squamate's eyes. The lizard must have had good hearing, or perhaps all of them did. He never bothered asking one before the war or dared to after it, so a guess was all that he was left with.

"So much for the security of a whispered conversation," he grumbled with a shake of his head.

Lori nodded in agreement before doing something with her hands, the egg-shaped pistol locked in her elbow and her actions concealed from the imposing lizard. The lime-coloured rabbit recognised her actions a few seconds in, and thankfully she repeated the terse message via sign language: _Should I take the deal?_

He responded with a small grimace and similar gestures: _I don't know._

_Why not?_

_Time. We spent enough at That Gun Rabbit's house and doing this will waste more on That Lizard's wall, even with provisions._

Lori managed a small nod, able to understand what he signed clearly enough. Only their names and a few others like Eva's were in their unwritten vocabulary, and "That Rabbit" or "That Fat Old Hare" or "That No-good Turtle" were intended as substitutes for the proper names of people they have run across. Creating a new language understandable by more than a sole user is a confusing task at times, but this was the best they could come up with over their many years of crafting and remaking it. In this case, they meant "Zen" for "That Gun Rabbit" and "that lizard" for, you guessed it, "That Lizard."

She shook her head over to Spaz and signed on. _What about Spaz? We can't leave him behind. _Jazz noticed the slight crinkling of a smile before the last few signs. _Or can we?_

_Not yet; we need to find a cliff first, _Jazz replied with a wide grin. _Now, back to topic. _He paused for a few seconds in thought before continuing. _Let's take the deal._

_After all this talk?_ she signed with incredulity in her eyes.

_We play by That Lizard's rules for now. No bloodshed that way, and Spaz would be protected less if we take the deal and have to go back on it. Let's talk later._

The silence had lasted a short while, and the lizards surrounding the two were growing uneasy of the conversation that they could not hear or understand. As the two turned, Jazz read that the bladed lizard had been looking at them curiously, still with the obnoxious sneering smile painted across his face.

"So?" it questioned in a terse manner.

"Deal," Lori responded similarly, holstering her plasma pistol, "but I will be watching you."

"Same here," he quipped, and at the snap of his fingers a pooped Spaz was lifted from the ground, carried off, and out of sight beyond a cluster of hovels.

"Just be sure he is in a better condition than you left him in," Jazz continued with a small scowl, distrust reemerging in his tone.

"He is in safe hands," the other returned as he sheathed his knife into the armband and trotted off, "so long as you do what needs to be done."

* * *

"It's hopeless . . ." Jazz groaned, rubbing his aching shoulders after yet another failed attempt of moving the massive titan of an ironwood tree. He and Lori attempted to shift the smallest, yet still enormous, log from out of the pile for what felt like the fifteenth time and did not succeed in having it budge any more than an indeterminable amount through each effort.

"What is hopeless? Moving this or the rah-rah cheering coming from that guy?" Lori said from the other side of the log, pointing at a nearby lizard.

The critter was doing its best to help them out without helping them out, pulling off silly stunts and gargling a medley of pitiful beat-boxing dubstep and an equally terrible fight song. Whatever other lizards which were around ignored its antics flawlessly, causing the two to speculate whether this happened far earlier than now.

"Both," he stated, his voice so stale and emotionless they both burst into laughing a moment later. "But seriously now," he continued with a wipe of his eye, "this is impossible for two people to do on their own. If we can't roll it, we can't lift it. It's a herculean task!"

Let it be noted that the legend section in the Catalogs of Carrotus were very limited, much of history forgotten except a very ironic four: _Aesop's Noblest Assumptions_, or what some lowlifes call _Aesop's Fables_; recovered Greek tales such as the ever-strong Heracles, the inventive Daedalus, and the crafty Oedipus; a relatively newer legend and fastest thing alive, Sonic the Hedgehog; and The Book Without a Name, undoubtedly the most infamous of the four.

Let it also be known that, unlike the other artefacts, The Book without a Name was once stolen from the Catalogs, and once the thieves read from the thing their bodies dubbed the reading as so atrocious they atomised into fine cones of dust. From then on, the book was not placed on a beautiful shelf for all to see, but was instead vaulted off in the centre of the world, guarded by the most horrific of creatures, the thespiosaurs. Nobody really knew what happened to it afterwards.

"So that leaves us with only one option, doesn't it?" Lori queried, shrugging at her brother's statement.

Jazz frowned and looked up at the hole in the wall. He knew it might take a building crane or a workforce of thirty to lift the enormous post upright and set it back in the cavity, but they did not have either. To get their irritating sib back, a better plan was needed, else they would have to fight their way through droves of potential innocents. Perhaps a plan that incorporated wits, strength, and ingenuity.

"Maybe two," he stated, grinning wilily over to Lori. "Butt U. Glee didn't say on what terms we needed to finish this, right?"

Lori shot an eyebrow upwards before she nodded.

"That is true, but I don't see where you are getting at here," she confessed.

"It's easy. We can conjure up some assistance, hire some workers, promise them money and a steady supply of food and water, finish, get Spaz out of this mess, and leg it."

"Wow," responded the lemon-hued rabbit with a thoughtful bob of her head. "How very . . . capitalistic of you. And what makes you think that we are not being watched or overheard?"

Jazz shrugged his shoulders and pointed over to an empty chair in front of a distant residence that had assuredly seen better days.

"One reason is that the lizard king or whatever you call him is not in his 'glorious' throne nd went back into his palace. Another is that nobody wants to listen to this bloke perform."

The silly squamate was finishing off an incredible solo, its reptilian lips huffing and puffing as it dubstepped its lungs out. Shortly after, the lizard performed a extra-stupendously glorious somersault that left it more than a little winded. No somersault would shut its mouth, however, and the lizard kept up what it was born to do.

"Well, you got me there," Lori laughed. "This guy really is helping us out after all. I wish I had something to give him right here and now for his, er . . . performance."

"No problem! It's nice to see happy customers!" the lizard exploded with such force the two's feet left ground zero in astonishment. The critter must have been just that piqued to see its lifelong goal obersved as a boon. "Oh, and by the way, I'm a girl."

"Croc dragons, live signs, and female lizards that look like male lizards . . . I don't think my days could get much weirder," Lori sighed.

* * *

Far outside their unusual galaxy, a massive triangular grin formulated out of the darkness of space and wheezily chuckled at Lori's statement. The guardian of the Wheel of Fortune, now freshly awakened from its slumber, spun the circular object nearby with a gnarled, ghostly hand and smugly sank into the blankets of sleep once more, satisfied with another civic duty tucked under its belt.

The wheel churned and churned and churned, finally ending up with the dial resting on a picture of a scarlet bunny about to eat a bluebird.


End file.
